https://mailchi.mp/8fbc25bd843b/krd-news-thank-you-michael-che?e=9365a7c638
“Israel is reporting that they vaccinated half of their population,” comedian Michael Che quipped on this week’s Weekend Update segment of Saturday Night Live. “I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half.”
Cue the outrage: In email chains and on WhatsApp groups, on Twitter and in frantic text messages, the Jews reacted—expressing anger (“can you believe they would air such an offensive joke on TV? Jews shouldn’t be conflated with Israel!”), sharing irrelevant facts (“actually, 43% of Israel’s Arabs have already been vaccinated, too!”), and, my favorite, Sternly Demanding Apologies™: “Your ‘joke’ is ignorant—the fact is that the success of our vaccination drive is exactly because every citizen of Israel—Jewish, Muslim, Christian—is entitled to it. Apologize!”
Friends, we’ve got to stop this. Che’s joke wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t something someone accidentally let air on a decades-long television show with a cast and crew in the hundreds. It wasn’t even new for him. Was the line anti-Semitic? Yep. Was it also absolutely intended? You betcha.
If you’re one of the good folk upset by this joke, I’m going to guess that at least some of the following statements are also true about you: You’re furious about the anti-Israel bent in The New York Times and wonder what can be done to make the paper of record “correct its bias”; you can’t believe how mired in political correctness our culture has gotten; you think we should spend a lot of time and resources fighting BDS on college campuses; you don’t fully understand why and how what you may call “the woke” or “the radical left” got so loud and so influential, but you think it’s very important and very possible for reasonable people to get together and beat back the tide.