This Week in The Tikvah Fund Tries to Ignore the Banning of Art Spiegelman's Maus in Tennessee (1/30)
David Shasha
The Banning of Art Spiegelman’s Maus in Tennessee
Apparently, this past Thursday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, making it to my count three days a year that Jews can mark the day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_HaShoah
https://www.ushmm.org/remember/international-holocaust-remembrance-day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av
Choose one, choose all!
On that day we learned that the Rufo Weiss Institute machers in Trump Tennessee decided to ban Art Spiegelman’s classic graphic novel Maus from its public schools:
Spiegelman found himself appearing on the various cable news channels to comment on the banning:
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2022/01/27/maus-tennessee-school-board-art-spiegelman-newday-vpx.cnn
SHU readers might recall my 2015 article on the racist Yeshivah of Flatbush High School devoting its annual Book Day to the work:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/fqNkqS3zv4w/m/pyYTGcSo97UJ
In my article I made note of the interesting tidbit that among the plethora of speakers at the YOFHS event, including Abe Foxman of the ADL, Spiegelman was not one of them:
A simple Google search shows that Spiegelman is indeed represented by an agent and does give lectures:
http://barclayagency.com/spiegelman.html
His Wikipedia page indicates that he lives in Lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Spiegelman
Last September The Forward published an article discussing Spiegelman’s views on Israel and Zionism and how that fits into his understanding of the Holocaust and Jewish history:
http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/205222/art-spiegelman-breaks-his-silence-on-israel/
So when we see that Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League is giving the keynote presentation at the YOFHS Book Day, we should not at all be surprised. Spiegelman’s view of Israel does not comport with the accepted wisdom of the school and its hard-line ideology.
Indeed, even at an event honoring his excellent book, he was not welcome to present his ideas.
In my article I commented on how YOFHS “uses” the Holocaust in a way that supports their Right Wing Religious Zionism; something that would likely not have appealed to the Left Wing Spiegelman.
The banning of his book by the Tennessee Rufo Weiss Trumpists is therefore even more interesting, given that even a pro-Trump institution like YOFHS makes use of it for their students.
Day 1 of the Maus: The Tikvah Fund Supports Trumpworld Book Bans Through its Silence
I will now look at the many Tikvah-related posts from that day; all of which lack any mention of the Maus ban.
First, Mosaic magazine:
No Maus, but plenty of White Jewish Supremacist Dara Horn, New Queen of the Jews!
Then we have the Jewish Insider:
https://mailchi.mp/1aed9e2b0cff/daily-kickoff-781542?e=[UNIQID]
And their companion eJewish Philanthropy:
https://mailchi.mp/465408548b0b/your-daily-phil-4919476?e=[UNIQID]
Tikvah Tablet:
https://mailchi.mp/tabletmag/international-holocaust-remembrance-day-zba31a1m9o?e=4b6f9b46a8
Bari Weiss:
And, by the end of the day, Tikvah Tablet The Scroll:
I am writing this note on Thursday evening, and will make sure to add another for Friday.
Day 2 of the Maus: The Tikvah Fund is Very Ambivalent about Trumpworld Book Bans: More Silence, Some Hamfisted Defense, Attacks on CRT, and Trumpist Bothsidesism
I was not sure what to expect when I read my Friday e-mails, and after reading them I found a mixed bag compared to Thursday’s silence.
Let’s get it started with the Whore of Trump:
No Maus, but a lot of Yiddishkeyt!
Mosaic decided to praise child molester-enabler Norman Lamm – but nothing on Maus:
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik praised Christians, but said nothing about their banning books:
And that leads us to the Jewish Insider:
https://mailchi.mp/4ad41f4e4c4c/daily-kickoff-781548?e=[UNIQID]
It took some time, but by item #12 we finally got it!
Tennessee’s McMinn County Board of Education, which earlier this month voted to ban Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus about the Holocaust from its eighth-grade curriculum, issued a statement on Thursday defending the decision, citing that the “Board felt this work was simply too adult-oriented for use in our schools.” The statement also noted that the board had asked administrators to “find other works that accomplish the same educational goals in a more age-appropriate fashion.”
It appears that JI is not too worked up over it, as its editor left us with a positive impression of the Tennessee Nazis defending themselves from the nasty Left.
Though they did give us a link to Tikvah Tablet Yair Rosenberg’s post on Holocaust literacy in America which does mention the Maus issue:
The same cannot be said about their sister publication eJewish Philanthropy:
https://mailchi.mp/b41235e00b2e/your-daily-phil-4919484?e=[UNIQID]
Indeed, the institutional machers are probably worried about offending their Trumpscum Jewish donors!
Then we move to the Trumpscum Bari Weiss and her Nellie Bowles TGIF, which made the whole thing go in the Rufo direction:
You have to go deep in the newsletter to get it, but it is there:
One other note: There has been a bipartisan consensus rising around the idea that children cannot handle upsetting or dark content. That seems to be what was behind a Tennessee school board’s removal of the celebrated graphic novel about the Holocaust, “MAUS,” from its curriculum. So you can read all of this through left/right political extremism, each group banning books. Or you can read it through the Jonathan Haidt lens of American parents across the political spectrum wanting a world with no sharp corners for their kids.
No attack on the Trumpscum, but the usual nonsense bothsidesism that blames the Left as the primary offender, with a critical nod to Neo-Con Social Science hero Jonathan Haidt:
The CRT backlash is intense and getting more so: A quick tit-for-tat summary: First, public schools implemented race essentialist curriculums and started getting kids as young as five thinking of themselves as white perma-oppressors or black perma-victims. Parents, seeing their children in Zoom classes doing all this, were shocked. Schools and the media erred on the side of deception, denying any of this was happening at all.
It is Trump’s Charlottesville all over again!
It might have been better if they did not mention it at all.
As we can see, when Anti-Semitism and Fascism comes from Trumpworld, The Tikvah Fund is silent for the most part, and when it does make reference to it, the idea is to blame the Left as well, and to minimize the problem.
Day 3 (Shabbos) of the Maus: Tikvah Tablet The Scroll Completely Ignores It
As happened last week with the Colleysville matter, yes it has been a whole week, I have decided to update the notes after Shabbat to give the Whore of Trump every opportunity to do the right thing.
It was not worth it.
Or maybe it was:
There is really not much of anything there: some more pathetic COVID denialism whining, a bit on the Australian Open to get in the mandatory anti-vaxxer Djokovic mention, and some inane HASBARAH, among the rest of the Tikvah Neo-Con dross.
So, it’s official, the Whore of Trump is all in with the Tennessee Maus ban, as I predicted she would be in my article “Tikvah Tablet Channels the Charles Murray Racism: Can Someone Book Tickets to Tennessee for Alana Newhouse and Bari Weiss?” back in July 2021:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/qUBbTbU9pxM/m/k7E7LecAAQAJ
All’s well that ends well in the Zalman Bernstein bordello.
Steve Bannon is smiling!
David Shasha