Greased And Frightening

 

Greased And Frightening

Part Four

by

R.E. Prindle

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/99378/greased-frightening 

Rachel Shukert

It would be well for men if they also were ruled by a severe opinion.  The passions are always foes, but it is only when they are encouraged that they are able to become masters; it is only when they have allied themselves with habit that their terrible power becomes known.  They resemble the wild beasts which men feed and cherish until they are themselves devoured by their playmates.  What miseries they cause, how many intellects they paralyze, how many families they ruin, how many innocent hearts they break asunder, how man lives they poison, how many young corpses they carry to the tomb!  What fate can be more wretched than that of a man who resigns himself to them?

–Winwood Reade: The Martyrdom Of Man

     Rache subtitles her extravaganza ‘John Travolta’s massages, “homosexual Jewish men’ in Hollywood, and the true nature of prejudice.  Well, wow!  was I ever ready to be enlightened.  Unfortunately Rache use all the time honored negatives to slander her subject that people, shall I say, of her type always use rather than proving her point.

     The first key ‘descriptor’ ( a new word that is suddenly popping up everywhere) Rache employs is ‘conspiracy’.   Where would slanderers like Rache be without that word?  While the quote from either John or his masseur, at least through his masseur, mentions nothing about a conspiracy, merely that Jews who are also homosexuals are in control of dispensing acting roles,  Rache extends this simple statement of fact into a much broader field.  It’s a common trick, not that I intend to imply that Rache is turning common tricks here, but one that I think demeans the perpetrator, in this case our own virtuous Rachel.

     And then Rache rings the changes on the phobias.  John or any of her victims I suspect never have opinions, merely phobias or at least prejudices.  Of course, Rache’s mind is strictly rational, or maybe not.  While she doesn’t acknowledge her own prejudices they are obvious to we readers.

     Check out this whopper:

     …as Oscar Wilde said, the only worse thing than being talked about is not being talked about.  Imagine how disappointed we’d (the Jews) be if they (us) ever stopped accusing us (the Jews) of things we didn’t do.  We’d just be some other vaguely Mediterranean-looking ethnic group, with no more hold over the public imagination than the Italians or, God forbid, the Greeks.

     Hold over the public imagination?  Rache manages to defame nondescript Mediterranean looking peoples as well as naming the Italians and, God forbid, the Greeks.  The Greeks?  What did they ever do to you, Rache?  What can have caused that bigoted comment?

     Oscar Wilde as we all know was a notorious flaming queen although- thank God- no Jew.  That certainly gives the lie to the notion that all homosexuals are Jewish men in Hollywood, doesn’t it?  Slippery phrasing that, but Rache is good at it.  An example:  Rache cryptically says:  All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares.  On one count the absurdity of her statement doesn’t require consideration, but, my God, she must mean something by it, doesn’t she?

     So far we’ve got a few hundred words of light hearted banter from Rache but we’re no closer to the true nature of prejudice that she promised to reveal although she has revealed many aspects of her own prejudices.

     I suppose she was waiting for the dramatic last sentence of her essay in which she says:

With a single…prejudicial statement, John Travolta has neatly subverted the old maxim about paranoia, and in doing so, the essential emptiness behind prejudice itself.  It’s not that they aren’t out to get you.  It’s just that “they” is (sic) usually “you”.

     Rache meant that to be neat but it’s not as neat as she thought.  What she says is that a man found face down with a knife in his back committed suicide.  The question here, forget racial attributions for a moment, is that certain ‘gatekeepers’ who control the access to  acting roles are homosexuals and that the price for getting one of those roles is turning it up.  Either John is lieing or telling the truth.  That is the question.

     If true, then the second half of the proposition is that they are Jews.  No phobias involved, is this part of Johns’s statement true or false?  If true then John has made a statement of fact; Rache considers statements of fact permissible.  Rache makes no denial of John’s alleged facts she merely prejudicially defines him as a.  a conspiracy theorist, b. paranoid and c. his own worst enemy.  The implication is that John was a latent homosexual himself who induced these otherwise innocent Jewish homosexuals to stab him  in his backside.   Alright Rache, now it’s up to you to prove that.

     Hey, I believe his story and think that Rachel doth protest too much.  I mean what do the Jews have to do to remain the center of attention rather than fading into people like the Italians or, God forbid, the Greeks.