For anyone interested in the subject, I cannot recommend this superb book highly enough.
And, yes, there was sex in the camps, according to Wachsmann's sources.
Posted on 11/06/2017 12:26:49 PM PST by nickcarraway
What is the sound of America cringing?
Larry David now knows. And, it’s not pretty.
This last Saturday night, comedian Larry David was the guest host on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”
Let’s get clear on something: over the past month, SNL has had two Jewish hosts. That might be unprecedented.
Yet, while Israeli superstar Gal Gadot filled the Jews with pride, especially with her Hebrew shout-out, Larry David successfully pushed every Jewish button.
First: Larry told us how embarrassed he is, as a Jew, that so many of the men who have been accused of sexual harassment happen to be Jewish.
It felt like a flashback to an earlier generation’s fevered whisper: “What will the goyim say?”
Then, he imagined himself in a Nazi concentration camp, and wondered if he would have been checking out the women inmates. Did the Jews in concentration camps still, um, want to hook up?
“The problem is,” he tried to quip, “there are no good opening lines in a concentration camp…”How’s it going? They treating you OK? You know, if we ever get out of here, I’d love to take you out for some latkes. You like latkes?”
The phones at the ADL are probably ringing with the intensity of a thousand shofars.
How bad was Larry David’s performance?
Let’s put it this way: Lorne Michaels, SNL’s producer, could do worse than take over the cold open next Saturday night, and offer a public apology.
Let’s consider the second shtick first — the one about sex during the Holocaust.
Was there, in fact, consensual sexual sex in the concentration camps?
It is hard to imagine that such opportunities would have existed.
But, after the war? Absolutely.
The greatest baby boom in Jewish history happened right after the liberation of the camps. In the Displaced Persons’ camps, men and women met, fell in love, and had children. Sex and fertility was the ultimate affirmation of life.
When you think about it, Larry David has been leading us to this moment for decades.
Remember the famous “Seinfeld” episode — “The Raincoats.” It is otherwise known as the “making out during ‘Schindler’s List’ episode.
Newman, the loathsome mailman, spies Jerry making out with his (kashrut-observing) girlfriend, Rachel, in a movie theater during a showing of “Schindler’s List.” Newman self-righteously reports the incident to Jerry’s parents, who are horrified.
Larry David was one of the writers of that episode.
On one level, this was great social commentary.
People who are dating have been known to make out in a movie theater.
But, to do it during “Schindler’s List” seems wrong.
Because “Schindler’s List” had become an American Jewish cultural icon. For some people, “Schindler’s List” was a symbolic representation of the Holocaust. To make out during the movie would have been tantamount to making out during the Holocaust itself. The cognitive dissonance would have been overwhelming.
In religious terms, it was nothing less than a desecration of the holy.
And then, there was the famous “Survivor” episode of Larry David’s HBO series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” A Holocaust survivor gets into an argument with a cast member of the “Survivor” reality show over “who is the ‘real’ survivor?” Who had it worse – an inmate in Auschwitz, or a healthy young man stranded in the Australian outback?
What was that episode teaching us? That the term “survivor” is in danger of losing its meaning — so that almost anyone can claim its sacred mantle.
What about the piece about the (perceived) prevalence of Jews among men accused of sexual harassment?
Here is what Larry David either does not know, or does not want to know.
Throughout history, anti-semites have imagined that Jewish men were either effeminate (and that they menstruated), or the opposite – that they were over-sexed, often portrayed with grotesquely enlarged genitalia.
To make men into the sexual Other – it’s an old trick, and it played again in anti-black discourse.
The Nazi propaganda master, Julius Streicher, editor of Der Sturmer, took this notion to the next demonic level – that Jewish men had abnormal sexual desires, which they directed against pure Aryan women.
True to the example of their literary ancestors, some anti-semitic web sites have made the same case — that Harvey Weinstein’s outsize sexual and power stuff is directly linked to his being Jewish.
At 11:35 pm this past Saturday night, Larry David handed an easy victory to the modern-day ideological descendants of Julius Streicher.
That is why Larry David’s opening monologue was not only tasteless.
It was not only unfunny.
With the preponderance of anti-semitism in this country, it was also dangerous.
“...doubt anyone other than Larry David could have pulled it off...”
Maybe Mel Brooks??? Remember “The Producer” and Springtime for Hitler.
David’s facial expressions as he was emoting his way through the stuff were beyond the ability of the rest of us to produce. It was like that through the whole show, not just this one bit.
David is a JINO.
Steyn’s Song of the Week: Dance Me To The End Of Love - The Klezmer Conservatory Band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqgRnVYjNu0
Holocaust love song...
Larry David did a pretty good imitation of Bernie Sanders last year on SNL.
So did SNL do a skit with David as Sanders getting mad that Hillary stole the nomination from him?
Of course not. Silly question.
I don’t watch it, but occasionally if there is something relevant, I’ll see it on Youtube.
Same.
It's just not funny. I like funny.
Exactly. I just watched it on YouTube. I didn’t find it objectionable, not hysterically funny, but not offensive.
Jerry Seinfeld has said that he won’t play college campus gigs anymore because political correctness has made it pretty much impossible to tell any jokes that won’t offend some snowflake or another. Mel Brooks has said that he couldn’t have made Blazing Saddles today.
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/mel-brooks-blazing-saddles-pc-culture-1202568893/
Indian chief scene from Blazing Saddles
Of course some probably find this offensive.
Springtime For Hitler The Producers
I also thought the ‘Schindler’s List’ episode of Seinfeld was pretty funny.
To quote Stern when talking to Schindler "I think most people right now have other priorities."
I am one of perhaps a dozen people in the English speaking world who has never watched "Seinfeld" but an episode about Schindler's List????
Yikes!
I tuned in for 5 min after years just to see...
The news segment had reduced the talent to jo jo the dogface boy having to read anti-Trump political lines they know weren’t funny.
Like the producers were slapping a cow on the nose with a cheeseburger and saying, “eat it stupid cow”
Total disaster. Serves them right.
This season’s Curb episode 5- the ending is one of funniest things I’ve seen.
"...I didn’t find it objectionable, not hysterically funny, but not offensive..."
Well, there was this, by Mel Brooks: Springtime for Hitler -- The Producers
Yeah, but remember, the idea was that “Springtime for Hitler” was supposed to fail, so the Producers deliberately chose a show that was in bad taste. And it did not include Holocaust “jokes”.
Larry shocked the Jewish world years ago with his Schindler’s List Seinfeld episode. Jerry and his slightly underaged girlfriend had been kept apart for weeks by circumstances, and got together to see Schindler’s List. Before the movie started, they began to make out in the theater and apparently never looked at the screen but made out through the whole movie. Of course his nemesis Newman! was in the same theater and reported the scene to Jerry’s parents and everyone was shocked and stunned.
“You were making out.. DURING SCHINDLER’S LIST??????”
My extended family, full of Holocaust survivors, were horrified and offended. I thought David and Seinfeld got away with it because Jerry and girl didn’t necessarily know what was on the screen, they weren’t even looking. I wasn’t offended that time. I even kind of found it funny.
But I was watching SNL last night and my hands flew to my mouth and I said that I didn’t think this would go over well. I did NOT find it funny. My great grandparents were murdered in the camp and my grand father was in one for a while. I like Larry but this was too much.
For anyone interested in the subject, I cannot recommend this superb book highly enough.
And, yes, there was sex in the camps, according to Wachsmann's sources.
I’ll continue to not watch him.
L
Yes. I’m aware of that.
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