BEEF ON WECHT, PART ONE
or, when ben wrote
else...
I got an awful lot of emails and even a couple of
phone calls -- all of them positive -- about last Thursday's deconstruction of Ben and Cyril
Wecht's offensive, paranoid, ethically suspect letters to the editor. All of my
correspondents enjoyed the refutations, agreed with the observations, and fully
endorsed my suggestion -- even as they doubted it would be taken -- that the
Wechts learn to calm down, take a couple of deep breaths, and try to get a
little firmer grip on reality before firing off any more missives to
Post-Gazette
editors.
They should also, it seems, do the same before firing off any more missives to Post-Gazette readers.
One of those emails, from a thoughtful and funny and understandably outraged man named Jerry Schiller, explained that his wife, Else, received a direct-mail letter from Ben Wecht in response to a letter to the editor of hers that appeared in the Post-Gazette on Friday:
Ben Wecht wants to know what Post-Gazette readers think about Rob Rogers' editorial cartoon making fun of his father Cyril Wecht ("A Cartoon Low," Sept. 20). If the Post- Gazette is keeping score, put me down in the column for being too soft on Allegheny County's infamous, bombastic, vindictive, vitriolic, notorious ex-coroner.
Ben Wecht's completely unfounded and bizarre charge that the cartoon indicates anti-Semitic bias on the part of Mr. Rogers and the Post-Gazette only proves that the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Else Schiller
Penn Hills
I immediately remember reading, laughing at, and agreeing with Else's letter. I thought it was sharp and funny and just snarky enough to drive home the message loudly and clearly.
Loudly and clearly enough, it turns out, that Mr. Wecht could restrain neither himself nor his Brobdingnagian ego long enough to refrain from writing, typing, sealing, stamping, or mailing this little gem of dripping condescension and drooling absurdity:
Mrs. Schiller,
As I read your letter to the editor of the Post-Gazette this morning, I could only shake my head in dismay.
Because, of course, it dared to criticize his father -- who is, as you will soon learn, a man of impeccable professional and personal values -- and deigned to agree with those anti-Semitic bastards at the Post-Gazette.
And, in fact, he could do more than shake his head in dismay; he somehow summoned the strength to shake his keyboard in disdain. Though I imagine that is, by now, something of an unconditioned response. Some anti-Semitic Pavlov writes a letter, and his irrationalities start flowing.
Are you unfamiliar with the Medieval-era "blood libel" claims against the Jews, by which an entire people were accused of ritually slaughtering and drinking the blood of Christian babies?
If you aren't, Else, that's fine. Because it has absolutely nothing to do with Rob Rogers' cartoon or your response to it. It is but one more arcane and archaic reference to a very real history of anti-Semitism that Mr. Wecht hopes, as much by desperate association as by demented overreaction, to bully people into feeling a guilt they need not feel for offenses that have not occurred.
How about the way these claims created an archetype...
So it's the archetype's fault, huh? Well, you know, archetype sounds an awful lot like Archbishop, which we all know is a position of great leadership and importance to people of many Christian faiths, which have also come under heinous attack through the years and which, even now, may be persecuted for their simple existence.
I'd say that makes Ben Wecht a clear and troubling anti-Christic. No wonder the Post-Gazette printed his stupid letter. (Besides, you know, wanting to sell more papers.)
...which has surfaced in everything from Charles Dickens's child-exploiting villain Fagan,...
First of all, Ben, it's Fagin. You'd think someone so versed in awful Jewish stereotypes would know how to spell them.
Now. I could go into a long and detailed character analysis, complete with plenty of citations from literary scholars -- some of them even Jewish -- who would argue that Fagin is not so evil, nor so much of a stereotype, as dime-store critics and axe-grinders would have you believe. But I'll spare you all of that, if only because Fagin, like the blood libel, has about as much to do with Rob Rogers' cartoon as reason has to do with Ben Wecht's letter.
...to Nazi-era propaganda posters (we can talk about those oh-so-comically drawn big noses, another Rob Rogers favorite, some other time)...
Your Dad has a prominent nose. Deal with it. Rob Rogers' cartoon Bill Clinton always had an oh-so-comically drawn big nose too. Does that mean he is also an anti-Baptist? An anti-Bubba? Or were Clinton's big noses just a veiled and fiendishly subtle form of anti-Semitism that wanted us to associate nasty Jews with horny presidents?
...to current-day schools and mosques throughout the Middle East and beyond?
Did Rob Rogers study at one of those?
(Oh my God. He did. I just looked up his bio and discovered that he graduated with high honors from the Ahmadinejad Madrasah for Jew-Baiting Cartoonists and Suicide Bombers. After this cartoon, it's only a matter of time before he scribbles on a synagogue and blows himself up at a temple.)
Am I claiming that Mr. Rogers or Editorial Page Editor Tom Waseleski -- much less my fellow Jew, Executive Editor David Shribman -- is a conscious anti-Semite who sits around dreaming up subtle ways to demean and defame the Jewish people?
Yes.
Certainly not.
Bullshit. You're splitting hairs and hiding behind slippery (and stultifying) syntax -- your father must be so proud -- but the simple fact remains, for anyone who reads your lines and then looks between them, that you are.
What I did try to suggest, in the limited space provided me on the PG's editorial page,...
I couldn't help it if you misunderstood! I just didn't have enough time fully to espouse my hatred and paranoia!
(You know, in the forum I chose. And at the length I used.)
...is that the archetypes and stereotypes (e.g., the savage German, the hysterical Female)...
Don't you love that a guy who's so damned condescending to a female reader still wants to claim the moral high ground over people who stereotype and discriminate against women?
...are the insidious means by which bigotries are passed down, generation to generation,...
You would know all about that, wouldn't you, Mr. Wecht?
(Think I'm being unfair? Think I'm doing precisely what I accuse him of doing? Read his two letters again. And then stay tuned for the next post. Oh my, yes.)
... and that the most vulnerable recipients of these bigotries are those who don't even know where the archetypes come from or what they mean...
This is easily the most cogent and poignant point Mr. Wecht makes. If only because, as we've already seen -- and as we will see again later -- he may as well be writing about himself.
You're absolutely right, Mr. Wecht. Physician's son, heal thyself.
...(think of, say, the ignoramous Steelers fan in Mr. Rogers's own "Brewed on Grant" comic strip).
Speaking of Brewed on Grant: yesterday's edition was simply brilliant. And sadly true. Bravo, Rob.
Now. Where was I?...
...Viewed in the larger context of a frivolous prosecution in which the defendant is labeled a "flight risk to Israel" on the basis of nothing more substantial than his heritage,...
I'll agree that the whole "flight risk" thing is a bit silly. If only because a man of Dr. Wecht's mammoth ego would surely stay and go down with the sinking ship of his defense. Unless, of course, he thought the jury might be filled with those pesky anti-Semites.
...and of a newspaper that fails to comment on this calumny while routinely playing up the supposed atrocities of the Israeli state and minimizing or ignoring completely the far more heinous crimes of the Palestinian leadership,...
Calumny. Excellent. Why use a five-cent word (slander) or a ten-cent word (defamation) when a twenty-five cent word that only lawyers and pompous twits and people hoping to condescend their way through a lack of good communication skills will have at the ready? Way to go, Mr. Wecht. You're a credit to effluvia.
... it's not really hard to see how any enlightened 21st century individual, Jewish or not, might take deep offense...
Well, no. Not if you're nuts. Or paranoid. Or hyper-sensitive.
Or all of the above.
...when a cartoon depicting a man of impeccable professional and personal values...
Gee. I thought it depicted your father.
And, let's face it: federal indictments and bloviating egos aside, Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., A.S.S. is, as we will see later -- as if we have not seen already -- hardly a man of impeccable professional and personal values.
...as a bloodthirsty butcher appears in said newspaper, to be viewed and absorbed by hundreds of thousands.
Bloodthirsty butcher? I thought you said he was depicted as a bloodthirsty ghoul? Could you at least get your overreactions straight?
My assignment for you, Mrs. Schiller?
Ooh! Homework! With that and all the pompous, pointless lecturing about literary stereotypes and oppressed peoples, it's like being back in grad school.
Read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (it's not hard to find, even a century or more since its fabrication) and ask yourself whether you see any manifestations of it in contemporary American society.
This has suddenly become a Monty Python routine:
Officer Wecht: Rob Rogers, you're under arrest for anti-Semitism.
Rob Rogers: It's a fair cop, but society's to blame.
Officer Wecht: Right. We'll be charging them too.
If you don't, I'll know to stay clear of Penn Hills and your lovely Bavarian garden.
Translation: You're a Nazi.
I mean, that's not what he says. But it's what he says.
Bavarian Garden? That's pathetic. In all sorts of ways. If he'd really had the courage of his bitter little convictions, he would have said that he'd steer clear of her shower stalls.
Sincerely,
Senselessly,
Ben Wecht
A guy with way too much time on his curiously wringing hands.
p.s. The reason "the apple never falls far from the tree" is that the tree is where it comes from.
I believe Isaac Newton said that. I believe he also said that one rotten, ranting, irrational apple spoils the whole bunch. And I know he said that for every action there is an egregious and Wechtian overreaction.
cc: Rob Rogers, Tom Waseleski, David Shribman, Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.
Can you imagine the gross tonnage of Wechtian correspondence that must land upon the desks of those three men at the Post-Gazette? Especially if our persecutorially challenged tag team copies them on every irrational letter they inflict upon their readers. It must be terrifying to behold.
And all the more terrifying, I imagine, when those letters contain the kind of sheer, mind-numbing, bone-chilling insinuations of the letter that, just a few years ago, Ben Wecht's dad sent to Else Schiller's husband. Stay tuned for that one -- if you have the stomach for it -- later today...
They should also, it seems, do the same before firing off any more missives to Post-Gazette readers.
One of those emails, from a thoughtful and funny and understandably outraged man named Jerry Schiller, explained that his wife, Else, received a direct-mail letter from Ben Wecht in response to a letter to the editor of hers that appeared in the Post-Gazette on Friday:
Ben Wecht wants to know what Post-Gazette readers think about Rob Rogers' editorial cartoon making fun of his father Cyril Wecht ("A Cartoon Low," Sept. 20). If the Post- Gazette is keeping score, put me down in the column for being too soft on Allegheny County's infamous, bombastic, vindictive, vitriolic, notorious ex-coroner.
Ben Wecht's completely unfounded and bizarre charge that the cartoon indicates anti-Semitic bias on the part of Mr. Rogers and the Post-Gazette only proves that the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Else Schiller
Penn Hills
I immediately remember reading, laughing at, and agreeing with Else's letter. I thought it was sharp and funny and just snarky enough to drive home the message loudly and clearly.
Loudly and clearly enough, it turns out, that Mr. Wecht could restrain neither himself nor his Brobdingnagian ego long enough to refrain from writing, typing, sealing, stamping, or mailing this little gem of dripping condescension and drooling absurdity:
Mrs. Schiller,
As I read your letter to the editor of the Post-Gazette this morning, I could only shake my head in dismay.
Because, of course, it dared to criticize his father -- who is, as you will soon learn, a man of impeccable professional and personal values -- and deigned to agree with those anti-Semitic bastards at the Post-Gazette.
And, in fact, he could do more than shake his head in dismay; he somehow summoned the strength to shake his keyboard in disdain. Though I imagine that is, by now, something of an unconditioned response. Some anti-Semitic Pavlov writes a letter, and his irrationalities start flowing.
Are you unfamiliar with the Medieval-era "blood libel" claims against the Jews, by which an entire people were accused of ritually slaughtering and drinking the blood of Christian babies?
If you aren't, Else, that's fine. Because it has absolutely nothing to do with Rob Rogers' cartoon or your response to it. It is but one more arcane and archaic reference to a very real history of anti-Semitism that Mr. Wecht hopes, as much by desperate association as by demented overreaction, to bully people into feeling a guilt they need not feel for offenses that have not occurred.
How about the way these claims created an archetype...
So it's the archetype's fault, huh? Well, you know, archetype sounds an awful lot like Archbishop, which we all know is a position of great leadership and importance to people of many Christian faiths, which have also come under heinous attack through the years and which, even now, may be persecuted for their simple existence.
I'd say that makes Ben Wecht a clear and troubling anti-Christic. No wonder the Post-Gazette printed his stupid letter. (Besides, you know, wanting to sell more papers.)
...which has surfaced in everything from Charles Dickens's child-exploiting villain Fagan,...
First of all, Ben, it's Fagin. You'd think someone so versed in awful Jewish stereotypes would know how to spell them.
Now. I could go into a long and detailed character analysis, complete with plenty of citations from literary scholars -- some of them even Jewish -- who would argue that Fagin is not so evil, nor so much of a stereotype, as dime-store critics and axe-grinders would have you believe. But I'll spare you all of that, if only because Fagin, like the blood libel, has about as much to do with Rob Rogers' cartoon as reason has to do with Ben Wecht's letter.
...to Nazi-era propaganda posters (we can talk about those oh-so-comically drawn big noses, another Rob Rogers favorite, some other time)...
Your Dad has a prominent nose. Deal with it. Rob Rogers' cartoon Bill Clinton always had an oh-so-comically drawn big nose too. Does that mean he is also an anti-Baptist? An anti-Bubba? Or were Clinton's big noses just a veiled and fiendishly subtle form of anti-Semitism that wanted us to associate nasty Jews with horny presidents?
...to current-day schools and mosques throughout the Middle East and beyond?
Did Rob Rogers study at one of those?
(Oh my God. He did. I just looked up his bio and discovered that he graduated with high honors from the Ahmadinejad Madrasah for Jew-Baiting Cartoonists and Suicide Bombers. After this cartoon, it's only a matter of time before he scribbles on a synagogue and blows himself up at a temple.)
Am I claiming that Mr. Rogers or Editorial Page Editor Tom Waseleski -- much less my fellow Jew, Executive Editor David Shribman -- is a conscious anti-Semite who sits around dreaming up subtle ways to demean and defame the Jewish people?
Yes.
Certainly not.
Bullshit. You're splitting hairs and hiding behind slippery (and stultifying) syntax -- your father must be so proud -- but the simple fact remains, for anyone who reads your lines and then looks between them, that you are.
What I did try to suggest, in the limited space provided me on the PG's editorial page,...
I couldn't help it if you misunderstood! I just didn't have enough time fully to espouse my hatred and paranoia!
(You know, in the forum I chose. And at the length I used.)
...is that the archetypes and stereotypes (e.g., the savage German, the hysterical Female)...
Don't you love that a guy who's so damned condescending to a female reader still wants to claim the moral high ground over people who stereotype and discriminate against women?
...are the insidious means by which bigotries are passed down, generation to generation,...
You would know all about that, wouldn't you, Mr. Wecht?
(Think I'm being unfair? Think I'm doing precisely what I accuse him of doing? Read his two letters again. And then stay tuned for the next post. Oh my, yes.)
... and that the most vulnerable recipients of these bigotries are those who don't even know where the archetypes come from or what they mean...
This is easily the most cogent and poignant point Mr. Wecht makes. If only because, as we've already seen -- and as we will see again later -- he may as well be writing about himself.
You're absolutely right, Mr. Wecht. Physician's son, heal thyself.
...(think of, say, the ignoramous Steelers fan in Mr. Rogers's own "Brewed on Grant" comic strip).
Speaking of Brewed on Grant: yesterday's edition was simply brilliant. And sadly true. Bravo, Rob.
Now. Where was I?...
...Viewed in the larger context of a frivolous prosecution in which the defendant is labeled a "flight risk to Israel" on the basis of nothing more substantial than his heritage,...
I'll agree that the whole "flight risk" thing is a bit silly. If only because a man of Dr. Wecht's mammoth ego would surely stay and go down with the sinking ship of his defense. Unless, of course, he thought the jury might be filled with those pesky anti-Semites.
...and of a newspaper that fails to comment on this calumny while routinely playing up the supposed atrocities of the Israeli state and minimizing or ignoring completely the far more heinous crimes of the Palestinian leadership,...
Calumny. Excellent. Why use a five-cent word (slander) or a ten-cent word (defamation) when a twenty-five cent word that only lawyers and pompous twits and people hoping to condescend their way through a lack of good communication skills will have at the ready? Way to go, Mr. Wecht. You're a credit to effluvia.
... it's not really hard to see how any enlightened 21st century individual, Jewish or not, might take deep offense...
Well, no. Not if you're nuts. Or paranoid. Or hyper-sensitive.
Or all of the above.
...when a cartoon depicting a man of impeccable professional and personal values...
Gee. I thought it depicted your father.
And, let's face it: federal indictments and bloviating egos aside, Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., A.S.S. is, as we will see later -- as if we have not seen already -- hardly a man of impeccable professional and personal values.
...as a bloodthirsty butcher appears in said newspaper, to be viewed and absorbed by hundreds of thousands.
Bloodthirsty butcher? I thought you said he was depicted as a bloodthirsty ghoul? Could you at least get your overreactions straight?
My assignment for you, Mrs. Schiller?
Ooh! Homework! With that and all the pompous, pointless lecturing about literary stereotypes and oppressed peoples, it's like being back in grad school.
Read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (it's not hard to find, even a century or more since its fabrication) and ask yourself whether you see any manifestations of it in contemporary American society.
This has suddenly become a Monty Python routine:
Officer Wecht: Rob Rogers, you're under arrest for anti-Semitism.
Rob Rogers: It's a fair cop, but society's to blame.
Officer Wecht: Right. We'll be charging them too.
If you don't, I'll know to stay clear of Penn Hills and your lovely Bavarian garden.
Translation: You're a Nazi.
I mean, that's not what he says. But it's what he says.
Bavarian Garden? That's pathetic. In all sorts of ways. If he'd really had the courage of his bitter little convictions, he would have said that he'd steer clear of her shower stalls.
Sincerely,
Senselessly,
Ben Wecht
A guy with way too much time on his curiously wringing hands.
p.s. The reason "the apple never falls far from the tree" is that the tree is where it comes from.
I believe Isaac Newton said that. I believe he also said that one rotten, ranting, irrational apple spoils the whole bunch. And I know he said that for every action there is an egregious and Wechtian overreaction.
cc: Rob Rogers, Tom Waseleski, David Shribman, Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.
Can you imagine the gross tonnage of Wechtian correspondence that must land upon the desks of those three men at the Post-Gazette? Especially if our persecutorially challenged tag team copies them on every irrational letter they inflict upon their readers. It must be terrifying to behold.
And all the more terrifying, I imagine, when those letters contain the kind of sheer, mind-numbing, bone-chilling insinuations of the letter that, just a few years ago, Ben Wecht's dad sent to Else Schiller's husband. Stay tuned for that one -- if you have the stomach for it -- later today...
Posted: Thu - September 27, 2007 at 09:23 AM
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Published On: Nov 30, 2007 03:57 PM
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Published On: Nov 30, 2007 03:57 PM