Details' "The Power 50" list: #3 - The Jew As Lightning Rod

In Details magazine's most recent issue, there's a feature they host annually, "The Power 50" list. This year's rank 3 goes to "The Jew as Lightning Rod" and reads as follows (in the print copy):

"Are you a Jew?" When a marinated Mel Gibson sputtered anti-Semitic remarks at a Malibu deputy late one July night, he poured gasoline on flames that had been building throughout the year 5766. His sputtering—"The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world"—might have seemed merely ignorant, but this and other offenses (the opening of the restaurant Hitler’s Cross near Mumbai; synagogues vandalized from Brazil to Norway to New Zealand) came during an ominous year. The August 2005 ascendance of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier working on a nuclear program, rekindled Jew's power to attract unwanted attention. The ongoing coma of Israel's contentious prime minister Ariel Sharon brought about an uncertain government, vexed by the June kidnapping in Gaza of 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit. In mid-July, the seizure of two Israeli reservists by the Islamist group Hezbollah—bankrolled by Iran, based in Lebanon—sparked a border war. The United Nations’ and Amnesty International’s ensuing rebuke not just of Hezbollah but also of Israel enrages Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human-rights organization: “The world isolates Israel and accuses it of committing war crimes. It’s like 1938 again.” In that light, Gibson’s medieval passions seem particularly sinister. Beware: Drunk men say what sober men only think.

In response, I wrote the following to Details, and posted it as a discussion thread on their forum:

Details' #3 (The Jew as Lightning Rod) on "The Power 50" list couldn't have been more clichéd, less thoughtful, or even less morally responsible. Had they gone with the angle of portraying the disproportionate power that Jews as a minority yield in the media and politics—through the Zionist lobby and by extension the Christian Evangelical contingent—it would have been just as clichéd, but at least more factual. But to portray Jews as the neo-victims is so 60 years ago, willfully blind, and morally bereft. The problem with Details is that they don’t know whether to be serious or eternally tongue-in-cheek. But, alas for the wise-ass kids there, not every thing is kosher fodder for their cheap lazy shots. Jews now, through the state of Israel and their disproportionate influence on US politics and media, are victimizing more people than any other group (should we compare the numbers of victims on both sides in the conflicts they site in their aforementioned entry?). And that is power if I’ve ever seen it! But to ridicule the United Nations’ and Amnesty International’s reports on Israel’s war-crimes for the sake of a cheap far shot for a trivial list such as this is more than morally irresponsible; it is morally bankrupt and reprehensible! And what do they offer for counter argument? A pathetically-themed restaurant in Mumbai and synagogue vandalism (how about we talk about mosque vandalism?). I never had much respect for Details as a source for anything of intellectual value; it was always the entertaining on-the-john rag with cynical homoerotic pieces (and more glossy ads than writing). But even for their low-standards, they have hit a new low with this one. What a shame! Now, I will have to look for another entertaining on-the-john rag with cynical homoerotic pieces (and hopefully more writing than glossy ads)…