Fwd: Henry's Yiddish Radio Project Draws Hate Mail

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

>From yesterday's Times--this is truly weird.  It's certainly Exhibit #9,000, 
or whatever, of anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism (only somehow, weirdly, in 
reverse); but I wonder what, if anything, it says about (parts, obviously, 
of) NPR's audience.

No wonder Henry encouraged me to write NPR about the show when I mentioned 
enjoying it.  Maybe others should be writing them?

--Robert Cohen


>Yiddish Project Draws Hate Mail
>
>April 22, 2002
>
>By BERNARD STAMLER
>
>
>
>
>The Yiddish Radio Project was intended to be a lighthearted
>review of the radio shows broadcast for immigrant Jews in
>America during the first part of the 20th century.
>
>But after the recent conflict in the Middle East, the
>project, a 10-week series on National Public Radio, has
>become something more: a lightning rod for listener
>criticism. That criticism has included some "good,
>old-fashioned anti-Semitism," said Henry Sapoznik, a
>co-producer of the series.
>
>The broadcasts, which were scheduled months ago, are heard
>on Tuesdays on NPR's evening news program "All Things
>Considered." The first segment was broadcast on March 19,
>and five shows have been broadcast so far.
>
>"We routinely get deluged by both sides whenever the Middle
>East blows up," said Jeffrey Dvorkin, the ombudsman for
>NPR, which is generally thought to attract an upscale,
>highly educated audience. But he said there was something
>different about a number of the messages.
>
>Those messages, which he characterized as anti-Semitic, are
>generally sent via e-mail and are often signed, Mr. Dvorkin
>said. Some of those sent to him and to "All Things
>Considered," copies of which were provided by Mr. Sapoznik,
>disparage the series by using Yiddish words and expressions
>like "oy vey" to mock it.
>
>Others are of what Mr. Sapoznik called the "who is paying
>you to do this" kind, like a message lamenting the possible
>role of "some big donors" in selecting the Yiddish Radio
>Project for broadcast.
>
>Most notable, however, are those that connect events in the
>Middle East to the broadcasts.
>
>One such message complains of an "eternal blitz" of Yiddish
>radio, asking whether the series was "designed to obscure
>the Israeli brutality in Palestine." Another protests the
>presentation of "this kind of warm and fuzzy fluff"
>whenever Israel undertakes military action. Yet another
>says, "How do you say bloody Israeli storm troopers in
>Yiddish?" It continues: "How do you say, `Hey, these guys
>learned all the wrong lessons from the Nazis!' In Yiddish?"
>
>
>David Isay, Mr. Sapoznik's collaborator on the Yiddish
>Radio Project, said, "I've done a lot of controversial
>stories, but I've never seen the kind of e-mails we are
>getting here."
>
>The number of overtly anti-Semitic e-mail messages is
>small, Mr. Dvorkin said, perhaps a quarter of the 300 he
>and "All Things Considered" have received about the Yiddish
>project. (Mr. Dvorkin said he had received "tens of
>thousands" of messages in recent weeks about the Middle
>East and NPR's news coverage. Much of those are the result
>of organized letter-writing campaigns.)
>
>There have also been messages from Jewish listeners who
>contend that NPR has a pro-Palestinian bias, one for which
>it cannot compensate by presenting programs that show Jews
>in a favorable light. Some listeners have written to say
>that the subject simply does not interest them. There have
>been complimentary letters, too.
>
>Still, roughly half of those who have written to NPR about
>the Yiddish Radio Project have been critical of it, said
>Jonathan Kern, executive producer of "All Things
>Considered." Many of those listeners have questioned the
>timing of the program, an objection that Mr. Kern said he
>would not necessarily characterize as anti-Semitic.
>
>But Mr. Sapoznik disagrees. He said that conflating the
>actions of the modern state of Israel with the contents of
>American radio shows made more than 50 years ago is
>"nativist anti-Semitism." He called that position something
>"right out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,"
>referring to the early 1900's Russian forgery purporting to
>detail a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world.
>
>"If we had done a series on black Delta blues music at the
>same time as there was genocide in Rwanda," he said, "this
>wouldn't happen. People would never confuse blacks in
>America and blacks in Africa."
>
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/business/media/22NPR.html?ex=1020579400&ei=1&en=476381d743105e6a

>Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company




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