American Jewish comedian Amy Schumer has come under fire this week for a tweet
that has been branded ''tasteless'', ''offensive'' and ''disgusting.''
Earlier this week, the 34-year-old comedienne tweeted a picture of herself
standing between two horn players holding a bass clarinet and a tenor
saxophone, with the caption ''a Jew with horns.''
Apparently some Jews were highly offended because they thought the joke ''gives
life to the antisemitic stereotype that Jews have horns.'' The website Gossip
Cop dedicated a whole blog post to the tweet, calling it ''offensive and
wrong….While comedy can provoke discussion, its purpose is not to perpetuate
hateful and inaccurate stereotypes.''
I concur with Gossip Cop's premise. Comedy should provoke discussion. And I
hope that Shumer's tweet will do so. But no one, not even the most rabid
contemporary antisemite, believes that Jews have horns or tails. ‘Jews with
horns' is not a stereotype: it is a satirical metaphor. It points to the
abnormalities that are intrinsic to Jewish culture; especially choseness and
Jewish politics. The Jews who are ‘offended' and ‘disgusted' by Shumer's tweet
know very well that the crimes that are committed by the Jewish State in
Palestine are vile and verge on barbarian. These crimes set the Jewish State
apart from the nations. The Jews who are angry with Shumer are concerned that
the metaphor of the ‘Jew with horns' may cause some to examine the enormous
power of Jews in the media, in banking, in political lobbying, in Hollywood,
in the creation of the Zioncon mess in the Middle East and in controlling the
opposition to that mess.
Since Jews enjoy fame for their humour, satire and comedy, Jews must also
accept that occasionally they may find themselves subject to satire and
ridicule. However, if humour and satire serve to ‘provoke discussion,' then
instead of trying to silence Amy Shumer, Jews ought to support Shumer and even
beg her to throw more self mockery onto the boiling twitterati soup.
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