Blocking John Podhoretz: When Self-Esteem Finally Kicks In

Benjamin M. Adams on April 10, 2017   @BenAdamsO_O

Let me be clear. J-Pod blocked me first, and it was basically for no reason. Nobody had ever blocked me before he did it, and nobody has blocked me since. Truth be told, one twitter fruitcake has recently blocked me and thereby proven to be the exception. However in doing so, Shatner has simultaneously proven the broader rule: That it is *straight cray* to block me on twitter. The only reason to block me is if you are deathly allergic to either snark or reason, in which case your twitter-life seems destined to be nasty, brutish and short.

Granted, I was new to twitter when Podhoretz blocked me. Granted further, we were in the frightening-2016-resurgent-anti-semitism twitter. I was mostly unfamiliar with twitter-culture, oxymoronic as that term may sound and be. Equally important is the fact that people I followed were new to me. Sure, I’m basically just a rando dude on twitter, but to the people I follow, I’m a known rando dude. People I follow generally understand that my primary twitter aspiration is to personify the platonic form of smart-ass. They also generally know that I oppose things like, um, Nazism.

Anyway, to make a long story around a thousand words, there came a day that John retweeted a Nazi who had used a repulsive Jewish slur against him. I think the slur rhymed with bike, but I don’t remember. Racial epithets mostly sound the same to me, although I will remember the n-word forever if you say it the wrong way.  So I tweeted at John, asking him why he would give a platform to such vile anti-semites. My opinion is that retweeting these cretins gives them the thirty seconds of fame that they crave. More importantly, retweeting them simply serves to encourage rather than deter them. Put more simply, why give succor to evil by giving it a broader audience? So that’s my opinion on the matter. I figured John had a different opinion, which is why I asked him about it in my tweet. I guess John did not appreciate my question because he blocked me without answering. I fully admit to a feeling of disbelief. Incredulously, I cried into the void. The only response that came back was from the Nazi, who consoled me. “Don’t sweat it. He blocked me too.”

So I guess there *is* a bright side to most things. In this case, there are no less than two. First, it seems that I was able to bring out the nurturing side of a Nazi. Second, and no less important, is that J-Pod will not be be further distracted by my tweeted thoughts and questions. That will leave John with more time to write about how the Left is intolerant of debate.

John is Going to Stay Blocked For Now

While I am open to the idea of someday unblocking J-Pod, I am not sure that a speedy rapprochement is in John’s best interest. Let him miss my delicious thought-nuggets, and let him ask himself why. When this questioning becomes more frequent, John may be forced to look deeper inside himself. Perhaps John will realize, in a consequential rather than the typically fleeting sense, the same thing that I have come to realize: That I am too quick to react and too harsh in my reactions, and when I succumb to those impulses, I am a verifiable asshole. Same goes for you, John.

John, please realize one more thing. I am a small man. As a consequence of this bred-in-the-bone pettiness, I take the most infinite pleasure in the idea that you will from time to time find yourself blocked from reading my tweets. I admit to fully and corruptly adoring the thought of you scratching your scalp and feeling some mix of confoundment, confusion, and contempt. John, when I said that I was a small man, I meant really, really small. Can you hear me now, John? Well now. I guess you can’t. Instead of hearing me, see the same “unavailable” inanity that I must countenance each time your thoughts cross my TL.

John, there is a final thing that I ought to have shared– some truths about my maternal great-grandparents: Isadore was from Crackow, Poland. He married a woman named Bertha. She was from Hungary. Bertha was one of four children, but all of her siblings were killed by Nazis. So when you blocked me along with that redneck-wannabe-nazi, you were suggesting to the world that I was somehow a sympathizer of these vile, Nazi-loving cretins even though I owe my very existence to the sheer happenstance that allowed one of my ancestors to escape their murderous rampage of evil. So, John, you need to stay blocked for now, simply because this is the most effective way that I can encourage you to contemplate the moronic, unbridled dickishness of what you did.

My descendance from Holocaust survivors does not, as it turns out, begin to explain why I feel personally offended by racism. Rather, and probably to a myopic extent, I grew up understanding race in terms of  white people against black people — as a continuing, centuries-long conflict between the evil of white supremacy versus the resistance of the descendants of the African people enslaved and oppressed under its doctrine. I still see white supremacy as focal to understanding American social and political development, but contemporary local and world politics obviously reflect bigotry across a far broader spectrum than merely black and white. This includes surging Anti-Muslim sentiment, hatred and violence against the LGBT community, political targeting of “Mexicans” and of course the ubiquitous anti-Semitism now boldly emerging from the shadows. Let’s face it. It’s kind of ugly out there. At some times more than at others, it feels like bigotry is on the march and good people are reminded by Dr. King to oppose injustice anywhere as a threat to justice everywhere. In that sense, I am compelled to oppose bigotry whenever I see it– not simply when I see it directed against “my own.”

Maybe this is one thing that sets me apart from John Podhoretz. Racism is the number one reason — by far — that I never supported the GOP.  John wasn’t similarly hampered by the same reservations, but that’s a post for another day. For today, I want to be on good terms with Podhoretz. Accordingly, I will not link to controversial writings about his anti-gay sentiments, nor to his history of low-brow insults. I further refuse to hold his father’s racism against him, nor do I blame him for his receipt of nepotistic benefit when he took his current position at Commentary. I refuse to do *any of this* because Americans need to start reaching across the divides or partisanship, sectarianism, and ideology. I even apologized to Hugh Hewitt for heaven’s sake, so anything really is possible. The key and missing ingredient in this process is that Americans need to start listening to one another more and they need to start listening better. While that may not happen for me and J-Pod in the immediate future, I still have the audacity to hope.