Rick Sanchez was canned from CNN this week. In a general whine about the discrimination he has faced–which apparently burdened him with fame and an enviable job–he said something about Jews, suggesting that the elitist, mean-spirited Jon Stewart had no idea what it was to be a real victim like the good-looking media-celebrity, Sanchez. I can’t say I was a huge fan of either man. But the lightning speed with which Sanchez was dispatched says a lot about which groups in our society cannot be criticized and, concomitantly, which groups have significant power in that society. Genuinely oppressed and hated people can be criticized with impunity.
While the merits of either man’s claim to victimhood is kind of ridiculous, Rick clearly hasn’t been paying attention. For all of the vaunted independence, iconoclasm, and general edginess of the media, there are certain pieties that must be respected, and one of the most important of which is the utter sanctity of Jews as a victim group in the pantheon of America’s victim groups. We’re supposed to pretend that wealthy media executives are little different from Stetl Jews in Ukraine shot in ditches by Nazis, just as we’re supposed to pretend that blacks who became President of the United States are the victim of ongoing oppression little different from that of Jim Crow.
Much of modern America’s cultural obsession consists of a race to the bottom whereby various groups–blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Indians–are all competing to be the biggest victim of all. The only group that cannot play in this game is the old American WASP, America’s historical majority people that is grouped alongside with Hitler for having exclusive country clubs and Ivy League quotas 75 years ago and slavery some 150 years ago.
Sanchez pointed out an easily verified fact: Jews, as a group, are successful and particularly over-represented and powerful in the TV and print media. This is one of those facts we’re not supposed to notice, just as we’re not supposed to notice various short-comings of other ethnic groups. The Jewish claim to historical victimhood in America today requires quite a bit of work. After all, unlike blacks, Jews came to America willingly and voluntarily. While once upon a time there were minor discriminations and sleights against Jews in America–exclusive clubs, Ivy League quotas–on the whole, America has been welcoming to Jews, and, more important, Jews have been wildly successful in America in spite of whatever obstacles their great grandparents may have faced. They have become the establishment in spite of the continuing self-identification as being an alienated, oppressed outsider. That success, once a source of pride, became a minor embarrassment in the great multicultural race to the bottom that began in the 1980s. Upon further inquiry, however, it becomes clear that multiculturalism is in fact an ideology to promote and protect the new elites emerging from the decline and displacement of the WASP since the mid-20th Century.
As Peter Novick put this in his work The Holocaust in American Life:
By the 1980s and 1990s many Jews, for various reasons, wanted to establish that they too were members of a “victim community.” Their contemporary situation offered little in the way of credentials. American Jews were by far the wealthiest, best-educated, most influential, in-every-way-most-successful group in American society–a group that, compared to most other identifiable minority groups, suffered no measurable discrimination and no disadvantages on account of that minority status. But insofar as Jewish identify could be anchored in the agony of European Jewry, certification as (vicarious) victims could be claimed, with all the moral privilege accompanying such certifications.
The multicultural order is inverted. Victim status is the currency of the realm, and the Holocaust of the Jews, through books, movies, and constant repetition is placed above all other possible victimizations in the consciousness of Americans, even comparable mass murders such as those of the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and Turkey, and even though this event was largely not done to American Jews nor perpetrated by Americans. The elevation of this European event of some 70 years ago is particularly useful when the “victim” in question is fast becoming the society’s elite, with its members constituting 30 members of Congress and 13 US Senators, 43% of the most influential opinion-makers, and some 21% of Ivy League admissions today. Frankly, Rich Sanchez is right: for Jon Stewart or any other American Jew to proclaim the status of victim is patently ridiculous and insulting to ordinary intelligence. But Sanchez is too self-pitying to realize that it’s ridiculous for him, a man until recently on CNN with a show named after him, also to claim victim status.
A better approach for both the Jon Stewarts and the Rick Sanchezes of the world, has been suggested by Steve Sailer: a self-conscious development among Jews and other emerging elites of a sense of noblesse oblige, that is a sense of self-conscious responsibility for what is now their society coupled with public expressions of gratitude for this society’s opportunities. But, events to date, suggest that this softening of attitudes is unlikely. More likely is the overplaying of this hand by the “victims,” as represented in part by the unmagnaminous firing of Sanchez. I fear the continuation of such events would lead to an eventual, tragic backlash.
Subscribe To This Feed
Good article.
Minor quibble – US Senators are Members of Congress. We’ve got 30 Jewish US Representatives and 43 Jewish Members of Congress total.
I myself have always been a little underinformed on the bans on Jews in country clubs. I don’t know if they were bans on members of the Jewish ethnic group or bans on members of the Jewish religion.
If it’s the former, I wonder if it was accompanied by a whites-only policy. Sounds plausible. I wonder if Ashkenazi-descended converts to Christianity would really be rooted out of the club based on genealogy. I’m not so sure. All those Jews anglicized their names for a reason, presumably.
If it’s the latter, I would be willing to bet it was because of a Christians-only policy. I doubt these mean old country clubs would have admitted Gerald Gardner or Aleister Crowley (the only craggy old pagans I can think of are Britons, sorry).
Anyway, good thing maintaining the tradition of a Jewish seat on the Supreme Court created so much goodwill among Jews that they chose to preserve a Protestant seat on the bench. (Can’t resist poking a little fun, I guess.)
I agree with pretty much everything in the article.
One disagreement: While it’s obvious that Jews have lots of power in the media, people get fired for saying stuff about relatively powerless minorities too. Sanchez went on the radio and called his bosses a bunch of privileged, Jewish, anti-Cuban bigots (or “prejudicial”). That’s a pretty good way to get fired, even if you leave out the “Jewish” part. The “Jewish” part gave CNN an excuse to fire him immediately and directly.
Sanchez said in the interview, in effect, “I am not stupid”. That’s a classic self-refuting statement. The fact that the statement is false explains why Stewart was making fun of him.
Also, regarding “either man’s claim to victimhood”, did Stewart ever make a claim to Jewish victimhood? I don’t think even Sanchez accused him of that. It was the interviewer raised the subject.
You talk about “the utter sanctity of Jews as a victim group”, but it’s more complicated than that. Yes, in the mainstream media Jews are a sacred victim group, and this is a story about the mainstream media. But in more left-wing or academic PC circles, Jews are not necessarily a victim group. It’s quite legitimate for a PC university administrator to tell someone complaining about a blatant act of anti-Semitism by a lecturer, “You people don’t have a monopoly on suffering.” In non-corporate, stricter PC environments, Jews are not, as Jews, part of the rainbow coalition of blacks, Latinos, and the rest of the wretched of the earth.
Regarding the lack of a self-conscious noblesse oblige: like it or not, that was a big part of Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights movement and is still perhaps an explanation of Jewish leftism today. Leviticus 19:34, which secular and Reform Jews took seriously as applying to African-Americans, can be viewed in terms of noblesse oblige. What I think you and I would like is a restoration of the sense of gratitude expressed by Jewish movie producers in the first half-century of Hollywood.
Again, in spite of these minor disagreements I totally agree with the main points of your article. One last comment. Always remember not to confuse professional Jews like Abe Foxman with Jewish-Americans as a whole, especially younger Jewish-Americans.
Correction: I meant that a self-conscious noblesse oblige, not the lack of it, was a big part of all that stuff.
I didn’t mean to imply they were the only victim group with power. In the media all minority have some power insofar as all of them are able to cry “victim” and leverage that into avoiding criticism.
Stewart himself, apparently, in other settings has suggested he was a victim of bullying and that Jews generally are victims.
Finally, I think the civil rights movement and the more general Jewish-black coalition was partly noblesse oblige but also partly coalition-building for a newer power structure based on common cause among all minorities, a power structure that depends on constantly and persistently criticizing and hurting majority Americans. Sanchez didn’t realize that within that grouping infighting can also be dangerous.
The Sanchez/CNN issue is fun because it reveals more complicated issues under the surface–politically and racially.
Jon Stewart is the beneficiary of his cultural sensibility, which just happens to be shared by a large number of people in the media likely to influence his career. Reporters and professors, for example, who say the Daily Show–an extended news skit written to appeal to callow young liberals–does a better job than the news media (not a high bar, but a ridiculous claim nonetheless). In short, Stewart (nee Leibowitz) gets to take advantage of a boys club effect that goes on in television comedy and the media in general.
Rick Sanchez does not. Rick Sanchez is a very liberal, ethnically chauvinist Cuban-American, so he is viewed by the people who run these channels more for the “color” he adds as a Latino newsreader. He’s not exactly dumb (I mean, not any dumber than Stewart, probably–read an unscripted interview with Stewart sometime), but he’s plainly not very bright. Were he white he would be telling you about the string of break-ins at Salvation Armies across town, but he’s Cuban-American so instead he has a show on CNN where he does…whatever.
The idea that Jewish multiculturalism is a form of noblesse oblige is risible, however. Jews advocate for quotas that limit “whites” and “Asians” and promote “blacks” and “Hispanics”. Notice what ethnicity is missing in that sentence? Sure you do.
Jews want multiculturalism because it benefits them. It plainly doesn’t benefit the country as a whole.
As for how Jews are talked about on the Left–which is of course dominated by Jewish intellectuals–that’s a more complicated story. You have the black far Left, you have the progressive Left, you have the closer to mainstream Left, you have the emerging Latino Left–which ones really complain about Jews as such? And how do they complain about them? The answers to these questions tell a more complicated story–they certainly do not support the view that Jews do not see themselves or promote themselves as victims.
I agree that the Civil Rights movement, especially in its early days, could be seen as inter-ethnic coalition-building – among the elites in the organizations who really did stuff. Among the mass of Jewish-Americans, who of course strongly supported the Civil Rights movement, it just wasn’t seen that way.
Re the comment by MPC: I said that today’s Jewish leftism is perhaps noblesse oblige, and that Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights movement definitely was. I don’t see what the affirmative action policies disfavoring whites (including Jews) and Asians and favoring blacks and Hispanics has to do with that. Some, perhaps a minority, of Jews still think that as an ethnic group that has “made it”, Jews have a duty to help blacks and Hispanics as well. Some Jews (typically secular and Reform) see the Democratic Party platform as more or less an expression of Judaism itself, though I think that’s more the older generation’s view.
I don’t see why a backlash against Jews need be “tragic.” Jews are a revolutionary minority who support just about everything conservatives oppose and oppose just about everything conservatives support. They need some backlash if ever anyone did.
It is not noblesse oblige but rather self preservation. Jews have memories of Spain and Russia in their collective conscience. It is unnerving to be a minority in a nation that is overwhelmingly of one ethnic and religious group. Therefore, it is in their collective interest to empower and promote other minority groups as well as to support immigration of those groups. Anything to dilute the power and influence of the dominate ethnic and religious group is in their self interest so long as they are a minority. I imagine in a nation like Israel where they are in the majority, it would not be in their interest to dilute the power and influence of the dominate ethnic and religious group. Which is probably why you have such different immigration policies from the USA, and why there is talk of making certain citizens take loyalty oaths.
[...] Roach writes about Rick Sanchez’s firing from [...]