Who Are You Calling Lard-Ass, Ugly?

Oh, such a delicious Thanksgiving. Let me give you a tip, people: save your bacon fat. I keep a jar of it in the fridge, and in a wild moment of inspiration, I decided to use it to make Thanksgiving more festive. And I mean to tell you, I used it liberally. I used bacon fat with butter to caramelize the onions for the stuffing. I smeared the entire turkey in bacon fat before roasting it. For good measure, I put a sizable dollop of the stuff in the roasting pan to assist in the yummification of the gravy. I put actual bacon in the green beans, and sauteed them in the fat. With some butter. It was so smoky, so rich, so porky, so very, very good. I like a meal with a theme, and this year, the theme was "Behind Every Great Meal Is a Great Fat." My friends, let me tell you, that fat is bacon. Just like the pilgrims did it.

But even all this sublime swine could not distract from the key issues in the news: the twin meltdowns of Iraq and Michael Richards. I still have my Iraq/Vietnam post to unleash on the world, and I'm pretty much ready to go with it -- but my stomach is still a bit full, so I thought perhaps we'd start with an amuse-bouche to get us back into the swing.

So, here's what you missed while you weren't roasting your turkey in bacon fat (more fool you): Kramer from Seinfeld is not, to everyone's surprise, a Jew. We know this because he apparently made anti-semitic comments at a past show, before his bout with the N-word last week. Evidently, this past April, Richards did a show in which he yelled at some audience members who he thought were Jewish, "You fucking Jews, you people are the cause of Jesus dying." Naturally, he promptly hired a (Jewish) agent to say that, while the reports of the Jew-baiting incident were true, it wasn't really anti-semitism, because Richards is Jewish. Uh-huh. I don't think so. Or at least, I would have assumed so until I heard that quote, and then I realized the truth of Richards' hidden goyishness. For, while it is not unheard of for a Jew to be an anti-semite -- in fact, it's quite standard -- I can tell you from vast experience that Jews don't hate Jews for killing Christ. Jews hate Jews for being too smart, too nerdy, too pedantic, too typically semitic -- or, alternatively, for "passing", which is to say, for not being Jewish enough. (I have no doubt that T-Cro is going to kick in a few more things Jews hate Jews for, which reminds me that I should beat him to the punch and mention "argumentativeness".) But the Christ thing -- not even on the radar. While a little debate between Richards' friends and his publicist over "Jewy or not-so-Jewy" rages over the internet, I think we can consider that resolved and move on to the other core issue of the case.

The other core issue is this: Michael Richards is out on what is universally referred to as "The Apology Tour", making amends to the Afro-American community (his unfortunate phrasing, not mine) for the "hurt" he's caused them. I'm just wondering, where's the apology to ME? Because here's the thing: I don't think the people who get hurt in these racist incidents are black people. Some supposed Hollywood liberal revealing his true stripes and coming out as a bigot -- and not just any bigot, but a base, stupid, repetitive, N-word and lynching-imagery slinging, garden variety, uncreative, monotonous bigot -- well, that doesn't really hurt black people's feelings, does it? I think it's more likely it just confirms what they already believe about white people, that if you scratch our surface at all, we're all seething with the biological need to call people that name.

It's like when Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. It doesn't hurt my feelings as a Jew. It's what I expect as a Jew -- it doesn't hurt me, or make me sad, or make me hate the stupid people who think the Jews start all the wars, or flew the planes into the twin towers, or run the White House (and I love that Bush is probably unaware that many people in the Middle East think he's a Jew). It just confirms the idea that, for most people, Jew is still a loaded term. Those of us waiting around for people to stop caring heave a sigh and adjust on the sofa to wait a bit longer. So when Kramer goes and does this stupid shit, I think he should apologize to me, and to all the other white people to whom it would never occur to unleash a racist screed, and who, if we were ever in the position of being heckled by a person of any color or creed, would never even think of resorting to racial slurs, but would instead happily stick to the territory of unflattering commentary on clothing, weight, and choice of companion.

Racial harmony can be achieved, my friends, once we all start criticizing each other personally.