Now it turns out that the Anti-Defamation League’s head, Abraham Foxman, accepted $250,000 from Marc Rich for the ADL and subsequently wrote a letter lobbying for his pardon. Apart from Leon Wieseltier’s piece, I haven’t seen more analysis of the implications of Rich’s broad and deep buying of influential American Jews. Is the media afraid of writing about this for fear of fueling stereotypes? Safire rightly calls for Foxman to resign. Why not resign and return the money?
PILL-POPPERS UPDATE: You thought my take on AIDS treatments in Africa was depressing? Take a look at Michael Ledeen’s sobering anaysis in National Review Online. The most salient point to me was how weak many African bodies are – already assailed by any number of viruses and very limited vaccinations, poor nutrition, STDs, and on and on. It takes enormous stamina to fight against HIV. I have seen some truly ox-like young American men, with all our medical support structure, turn into skeletons in months. What hope for Namibians?
DIRHISING: Thanks for all the mail on this. A couple of new points. Some say that “hate” has broader social implications than killing minors, and therefore deserves more coverage. I simply disagree. I think one of our problems right now is that we have elevated petty bigotry to the level of one of the gravest sins, when it really isn’t. It’s ugly and demeaning to everyone involved, but I don’t think it competes with the abuse of people prompted by greed, jealousy, rivalry, pride, and so on. Why not decide to have a “pride-crime” law, for example, where if a crime is committed with withering, haughty contempt for the victim, the sentence is greater? Or what about a “cruelty-crime” law, where a murderer who dispatches his victim with real callousness can be more fully punished? Don’t callousness and pride hurt our society as much as bigotry? Yes – but the meek and the merciful don’t have a special interest group in Washington. The second point is that this was a local story – bizarre and lurid, but unworthy of massive media attention without some over-arching political or social peg. I have a two-word answer for that: Jon-Benet Ramsey. No broader message: just an evil crime involving the possibility of a taboo (parental murder) and sex (Jon-Benet’s bizarre pedophilic subculture of child pageants). The Jon-Benet story, of course, had the drama of an unsolved mystery. But the Dirkhising case is just as gripping and lurid. I think, alas, that our culture is still so unsure about homosexuality that one half of the country wanted to broadcast this murder to slander gays; and the other half wanted to bury it to protect gays. Both got their way. And a sane discussion of homosexuality and a humane horror at the killing of anyone by anyone regardless if identity got lost.
The Dish 