Charles Johnson Mon Sep 30, 2002 at 2:57 pm PDT • Views: 207
Cathy Young makes some excellent points in this article about where to draw the line between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism.
…ultimately, motives matter less than consequences. ”Traditional” anti-Semitism, too, often involved motives other than simple hostility toward Jews as Jews - including anticapitalism, since the Jews were seen as the epitome of the money-grubbing bourgeoisie. For whatever reason, extremist anti-Israeli rhetoric today has become, all too often, a vehicle for the kind of Jew-bashing that one might have hoped was extinct in the civilized world.
Interviewer: The notion of a "guitar solo" has preconceptions based on it; people automatically refute it because it's supposed to be self-indulgent or "for musicians." It's almost like things become iconographic and somehow lose their value for outsiders.
Zappa: Well, whose fault is that? That's what writers do. Musicians don't do that. The average person doesn't sit around thinking about the "iconographic problems of a guitar solo." -- Interview for Musician magazine, by Matt Resnicoff, November 1991. Reprinted in July 1995 Issue.
Charles Johnson
Frank says: