Three canards in today's Doonesbury
May. 31st, 2009 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuWith apologies for length, but I think this is important to understand:
Today's Doonesbury contains three misrepresentations which add up to something that --- well, I don't want to bandy about the term "antisemitic", especially since I don't think Trudeau meant it to be, but it makes me very uncomfortable.
Canard One: "The Old Testament God is always cranky and snarky to everyone." This canard, of course, is 2,000 years old; it's like my kids calling me "meanest father ever" when I make them clean up their toys before reading a book. "And God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a help for him to match him.'" (Gen 1.18) "I have heard their crying out due to the taskmasters, and I know their sorrows, and I shall come down to deliver them out of the hands of Egypt, and to bring them up out of that land to a good land flowing with milk and honey" (Ex. 3.7) "Give thanks to God, for He is good, and His lovingkindness is infinite; He gives food to all flesh, and His lovingkindness is infinite." (Ps. 136:1, 25) And perhaps most famously, "God is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing. In grassy pastures He sets me down, by placid waters He gives me rest." (Ps. 23:1-2)
God in the Hebrew bible is a complex character, filling a parental and sovereign role, which sometimes means acting in accordance with the attribute of justice, and sometimes with the attribute of lovingkindness. "Always cranky and snarky to everyone" is a libel.
Canard Two: "The New Testament isn't about anger at all, it's about love. God's son is this total pacifist...." Well, there was that incident with the tree that wasn't bearing figs; even though it wasn't fig season God's putative never-angry-always-loving "son" blasted it.
And, fundamentally, which of these two is more loving and which more angry: the one who says "No one can come to the father except through me" and damns non-believers to eternal hellfire and brimstone just because they are not of the "correct" faith, or the one who says that there are seven basic moral precepts that all humanity is expected to follow, and religious observance is only obligatory on those who have accepted the "yoke of the commandments"?
Canard Three: "The moneylenders, Mom!" As I understand it, they weren't money lenders, they were money changers, like the kind at the airport. Their role was to allow pilgrims to exchange their foreign currency for the holy shekels that would be needed to purchase sacrifices. And (again, as I understand it) the issue was not even the moneychanging per se, but that the moneychangers had encroached on the outer courtyard of the Temple, bringing the tumah that was presumed to be on the coins into the tahor precincts.
Of course, over history the role of the moneylender in Christian society was foisted on Jews, who weren't allowed into many other lines of business. The "Jewish moneylender" was a common trope throughout Christian literature; Shylock is merely the most famous of these representations. Look at many of the political cartoons of the 19th and early 20th century and you'll see swarthy Mr. Moneybags with his yarmulke and his designs on the good people of the United States, Germany, France, Russia, etc. And of course we have the infamous forgery by the Tsar's secret police, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Conclusion: By setting up a contrast between the libelous Christian canards of the "angry Old Testament God" and the "loving New Testament God", and then having his punchline basically be "But even the loving Christian God hates moneylenders" --- which many people will read as "But even the loving Christian God hates Jews, who are responsible for our fiscal crisis" --- Trudeau has, probably subconsciously, set off one of the big tripwires in the "they're going to kill us soon, aren't they" alarm system programmed (or pogrommed) into every Jew.
Today's Doonesbury contains three misrepresentations which add up to something that --- well, I don't want to bandy about the term "antisemitic", especially since I don't think Trudeau meant it to be, but it makes me very uncomfortable.
Canard One: "The Old Testament God is always cranky and snarky to everyone." This canard, of course, is 2,000 years old; it's like my kids calling me "meanest father ever" when I make them clean up their toys before reading a book. "And God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a help for him to match him.'" (Gen 1.18) "I have heard their crying out due to the taskmasters, and I know their sorrows, and I shall come down to deliver them out of the hands of Egypt, and to bring them up out of that land to a good land flowing with milk and honey" (Ex. 3.7) "Give thanks to God, for He is good, and His lovingkindness is infinite; He gives food to all flesh, and His lovingkindness is infinite." (Ps. 136:1, 25) And perhaps most famously, "God is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing. In grassy pastures He sets me down, by placid waters He gives me rest." (Ps. 23:1-2)
God in the Hebrew bible is a complex character, filling a parental and sovereign role, which sometimes means acting in accordance with the attribute of justice, and sometimes with the attribute of lovingkindness. "Always cranky and snarky to everyone" is a libel.
Canard Two: "The New Testament isn't about anger at all, it's about love. God's son is this total pacifist...." Well, there was that incident with the tree that wasn't bearing figs; even though it wasn't fig season God's putative never-angry-always-loving "son" blasted it.
And, fundamentally, which of these two is more loving and which more angry: the one who says "No one can come to the father except through me" and damns non-believers to eternal hellfire and brimstone just because they are not of the "correct" faith, or the one who says that there are seven basic moral precepts that all humanity is expected to follow, and religious observance is only obligatory on those who have accepted the "yoke of the commandments"?
Canard Three: "The moneylenders, Mom!" As I understand it, they weren't money lenders, they were money changers, like the kind at the airport. Their role was to allow pilgrims to exchange their foreign currency for the holy shekels that would be needed to purchase sacrifices. And (again, as I understand it) the issue was not even the moneychanging per se, but that the moneychangers had encroached on the outer courtyard of the Temple, bringing the tumah that was presumed to be on the coins into the tahor precincts.
Of course, over history the role of the moneylender in Christian society was foisted on Jews, who weren't allowed into many other lines of business. The "Jewish moneylender" was a common trope throughout Christian literature; Shylock is merely the most famous of these representations. Look at many of the political cartoons of the 19th and early 20th century and you'll see swarthy Mr. Moneybags with his yarmulke and his designs on the good people of the United States, Germany, France, Russia, etc. And of course we have the infamous forgery by the Tsar's secret police, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Conclusion: By setting up a contrast between the libelous Christian canards of the "angry Old Testament God" and the "loving New Testament God", and then having his punchline basically be "But even the loving Christian God hates moneylenders" --- which many people will read as "But even the loving Christian God hates Jews, who are responsible for our fiscal crisis" --- Trudeau has, probably subconsciously, set off one of the big tripwires in the "they're going to kill us soon, aren't they" alarm system programmed (or pogrommed) into every Jew.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-31 06:20 pm (UTC)Thanks for presenting a different point of view.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-31 07:09 pm (UTC)But I'm more likely to be misinterpreting than you or Trudeau, seeing as I'm not well-versed in the Bible or its interpretations and haven't read Doonesbury in years. Shame on me.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-31 09:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-31 09:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-01 01:22 am (UTC)Side note: to the extent these canards do not reflect what Christians believe (and I admit that they probably do reflect what some Christians believe), they are canards about Christians, not just canards about Jews.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-01 04:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-01 11:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-01 02:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-01 03:58 pm (UTC)I am not a big fan of the god on whom I was raised, but I sure as heck don't see the "angry vs. forgiving" dichotomy that's basically a comonly accepted myth. For one thing, the old testament god isn't sending me to hell because I stopped believing and practicing.
A quick reply to your Doonesbury comment
Date: 2009-06-03 01:57 am (UTC)The strip is, I think, an attempt to say something about modern day money lenders -- rapacious mortgage bankers. It arrives at that last panel by way of completely garbled, muddled thinking. I wonder if Trudeau himself takes it seriously. I don't think he's in control of the language here. But of course that doesn't mean the language isn't harmful.
There is something odd about this strip, something about who is in control of the characters' words. I stopped reading Doonesbury years because so often I felt the writer's intent to "bulletproof" his commentary. The words you commented on are spoken mostly by "Sam". As often happens in Doonesbury (and most sitcoms), what a young innocent says is presented as implied wisdom and surprising insight (like the little boy who announces the king has no clothes) -- Sam must be speaking a profound truth. And how can you criticize a child, an innocent?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-03 01:25 pm (UTC)Anti-defamation League asks for an apology.