As I write, it's Yom Kippur -- the holiest day in the Jewish year. It's 25 hours of fasting, praying, repenting and confessing. In that spirit, here's an uncomfortable admission. I kind of like Ann Coulter. Don't get me wrong, I disagree with much of what she says -- but I appreciate her raw wit and willingness to challenge conventional political thinking. That said, her penchant for being provocative hit a new low last week during the Republican presidential debate when she tweeted the following:
Her "concern" was that the GOP candidates were citing Israel far too frequently in a crass effort to court the Jewish vote. Later, she sought to explain herself by tweeting that she actually likes Jews. (Apparently, some of her best friends...) According to Coulter, she was simply taking issue with the alleged pandering. For me, the timing of her reckless and offensive language couldn't have been better.
In the history class I teach to 12th graders, we had just been discussing anti-Semitism -- its long history and ongoing manifestations. My admittedly sheltered students had all heard of the Holocaust and Inquisition, but few realized how many countries other than Germany and Spain had sought to eradicate or expel their Jewish populations. (Incredibly, almost 100.) A few students knew of the infamous "Blood Libel" or "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" -- but fewer still could believe that these baseless, hate-inducing tales are still being spewed today. (They are.) That the Hamas Charter cites the Quran and Muhammad in justifying ongoing war against all Jews (not just Israel) my students found disturbing, but this "threat" seems distant to them -- almost irrelevant, despite the rockets launched from Gaza. And when I showed a video of Mel Gibson being interviewed on Good Morning America after his drunken diatribe blaming all the world's wars on my people, students asked if it was real. They were convinced it was a scene from Saturday Night Live (It wasn't). Enter Ann.
I pulled up her Twitter page and a room full of idealistic American teenagers stared at the screen aghast. "How can she just say that?" "What will happen to her?" Despite their youth, they weren't buying Coulter's subsequent retreat-tweets. They saw her language "F'ing Jews" -- the same phrase used by Gibson, by the way -- for what it was. They understood her insidious, implicit message: No matter what our numbers -- and they're small -- we constitute a disloyal, disproportionately powerful threat. (The #standwithann tweeters certainly understood it that way.)
Then the class wondered aloud: what would happen if CNN's Anderson Cooper said, "Donald Trump may be overzealous, but there really are a lot of f'ing Mexicans here!" Or if ABC's Diane Sawyer posted, "Racism in law enforcement may be an issue, but many crimes are committed by the f'ing blacks!" We know, of course; their networks' reactions would be swift and severe -- and appropriately so.
We all sin. That's why during the confessional services on Yom Kippur, Jews pray in the first-person plural. But, before we're allowed to even ask for Divine forgiveness, Jewish tradition requires that we apologize to and make amends with the individuals we have harmed or hurt. I don't know what FOX will do with Coulter's future airtime, but my students are anxiously waiting to see what Ann does with hers.