A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

Right Answers Celebrated; Speaking Truths Not So Much

Jeopardy! champion Emma Saltzberg's commitment to Israel-Palestine
justice draws the ire of the organized American Jewish establishment.

It's only in the past year that I've become a big fan of Jeopardy!,
and I'm angry at myself for having missed it for pretty much my entire
life. Mickey Rourke's love for it in Diner should have been a tip-off.
Anyway, I was under the misimpression that the sorts of knowledge it
rewarded were, ahem, beneath me. But it turns out it rewards all sorts
of knowledge. (I got a call when I was reporting in Israel in 2008 that
my name had been part of a question. That may have been the height of my
fame for my entire life.) The show is a near perfect melding of
democracy and meritocracy and rewards both hard work and precise speech.
It's like a little island of truth in a world where the entire idea
has gone out of fashion. (Plus, it's one of the only places in the
media where "real people" are featured for reasons other than being
Trump supporters in Rust Belt diners

or anti-vax lunatics wearing MLK T-shirts while storming fast-food
restaurants

that ask them to wear masks during a pandemic.)

One thing that was not fun for the show this year was its attempt to
replace its longtime host Alex Trebek following his death in November
2020
.
In what journalists call a "roller-coaster year" for the show, it
embarked on a high-profile search for a replacement, only to give
everyone the idea that the entire exercise was a fix-Dick Cheney
style-when they went with the show's then-executive producer, Mike
Richards. Fans cried foul-another journalistic cliché, sorry-and
eventually, the powers that be settled on a combination of Ken Jennings,
its likable, nerdy winningest-ever contestant, and Mayim Bialik
,
the controversial actress, liberal, and Zionist (but not "liberal
Zionist"). Fortunately, the psychodrama behind the curtain was
overshadowed among devotees by the winning streak of the handsome,
charming Yale computer science Ph.D. student Matt Amodio
,
who won 38 games in a row. And then came Amy Schneider
's
40 wins, the second-most ever after Ken's
(measured in
games, not money, won). Schneider became a hero to people for her poise,
grace, and ability to handle the attention she received, not only for
being the first woman to break a million bucks but also for being among
the world's now most high-profile trans women. On the show, Amy was
open about having a female partner. In many media interviews, she spoke
about her history and experience as a trans person, and never was less
than articulate and good-humored.

But this being Altercation, what interests us today are the comments
made in media interviews with the Jewish press by recent winner Emma
Saltzberg, who won $58,799 and works with the organization IfNotNow
. (The group is named in honor of the
famous saying by Hillel the Elder
.) Because it
refuses to condemn the BDS movement-though unlike Jewish Voice for
Peace, with which it is often paired, it does not embrace it
either-mainstream Jewish organizations hate IfNotNow

far more than they hate apartheid in the West Bank (which, to be honest,
most are pretty comfortable with). Their problem with IfNotNow is that
it gives a voice to the significant percentage of young American Jews
who continue to care about Israel and the future of American Jewry but
refuse to take orders about what it is permissible to think and say
about either one from the self-appointed arbiters of American Jewish
officialdom.

Saltzberg reminds me a little bit of AOC during her bartender days
.
She was knowledgeable, articulate, full of common sense, but not at all
full of herself. I hope she considers a career in politics. A Hebrew
school survivor as well as the former vice president of Amherst College
Hillel, Saltzberg, while speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
,
beautifully articulated the way her experience on Jeopardy! helped to
illustrate her understanding of what it means to be Jewish. "What
makes the 'Jeopardy!' world so great is this sense of curiosity and
wanting to learn and be there for each other," she said. "And so
much of the conversation that I'm seeing in the Jewish world right now
is so deeply anti-intellectual in a way that I find really
heartbreaking." Saltzberg said she sees
Jewish organizations-big and small, secular and religious-rejecting
the painstakingly crafted research of a whole swath of human rights
organizations just out of hand, without even bothering to make arguments
about what it's saying on the merits. They just reject it out of hand,
and in a way that really sows confusion, for non-Jews and Jews alike,
about what antisemitism is. So they're calling things like this
Amnesty International report antisemitic or saying that it will increase
antisemitism just to look squarely at what the Israeli government is
doing to Palestinians. ...

That sense of, we have to put ourselves in competition is the total
opposite of the spirit that I've encountered in my brief time in the
'Jeopardy!' world, which is that people are incredibly supportive.
People want to learn and people are just decent to each other.

It's a competition-but it's also a place where people respect the
rules of the game, and if you get the answer wrong, you don't tell the
hosts that they're making it more dangerous for Jews to live in the
world. In some ways, that sort of clear competition creates a clearer
way to support one another.

In another interview, this one with Jewish Currents
, she explained
how she came to take a more critical view of Israel, which led her to
join IfNotNow: Alienated by mainstream Jewish organizations and
horrified by the 2014 story of the three kidnapped Israeli boys, the
hunt for them, and the burning of Mohammed Abu Khdeir

in retaliation, she heard via social media of an "event in New York
about this, which turned out to be the first ever IfNotNow action. I
remember looking at myself in the reflection of a store window on the
way home from work and realizing I wouldn't be able to sleep that
night if I didn't go to this action the next day. So I showed up at my
lunch break outside the Midtown office of the Conference of Presidents
of Major American Jewish Organizations, wearing all black." Saltzberg
said she "joined in the Mourner's Kaddish for everyone who was being
killed in Israel/Palestine" and came away from the experience having
found a place for "young Jews calling on our community to live out its
moral values and to oppose this violence."

Due to her presence on the Jewish McCarthyite Canary Mission list

(dark money-funded), Saltzberg gets hassled a lot by right-wing Jews,
but because of her Jeopardy! fame, she received a whole bunch of
antisemitic hate mail as well. I was so pleased to learn from the JTA
interview, therefore, that Lawrence Long, the nursing student and
self-described "stay-at-home uncle" from North Carolina who defeated
her told her that he would be donating to IfNotNow in her honor. "I
noticed the particularly hateful comments directed at Emma online," he
said, adding, "I would have had her back regardless of whether our
personal beliefs align ... I wish her nothing but the best and I gotta
figure out the cool multiple of $18 to donate."

As I said, I love Jeopardy!. Its importance as an institution should, by
now, have earned it multiple dissertations and at least one thorough
history. Like baseball, jazz, bacon cheeseburgers, and Bruce
Springsteen-and not those dipshit Trump-supporting diners in
Pennsylvania-it's what actually makes America great. And hey, Emma,
I think you are going to really like-and also really dislike parts
of-We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel, whose
third (and dammit) final draft I turned into Basic Books this week at
just under 163,000 words, to be published this fall. Write me back and
I'll see you get a copy.

[link removed]

Here's a sentence that ought to be in every single New York Times
story that has the words "Trump" and/or "Republican" in it. In
fact, it should be the first sentence: "But the entire narrative
appeared to be mostly wrong or old news-the latest example of the
challenge created by a barrage of similar conspiracy theories from Mr.
Trump and his allies
."
Unfortunately, it's only in this one.

But wait, here's another one: "Its underpinnings-as a hodgepodge
of people suffused in counterfactual belief systems, conspiracy theories
and barely bridled rage at anything seen as contrary to their
mission-frequently erupt through the official veneer.
"
That one is about Tucker Carlson's heroes in the Ottawa truckers
lunatic movement, but it should actually precede virtually every speech
and piece of legislation put forth by any Republican in the United
States, whether at the national, state, or local level.

With regard to last week's Altercation

on the topic of the Times' ostrich-like behavior regarding the Amnesty
International report on "apartheid" in Israel, and the enormous
reaction it inspired, I received this emailed response after it posted
from Danielle Rhoades Ha, a Times spokesperson: "We have covered the
debate over Israel's treatment of Palestinians, both the accusations
by rights groups

that Israel practices apartheid as well as with on-the-ground reporting
of the underlying conditions

that give rise to these arguments. While it is not our practice to cover
every report published by NGOs, these issues have been and will continue
to be an essential part of our Mideast coverage."

Finally, I spoke on CUNY-TV with Bob Herbert about the media's role in
ensuring democracy and their failure to do so when needed most, here
.

Music next week, I promise. But in the meantime-in line with this
week's theme, if you are looking to start an altercation in your own
head, just look at this meshugenah list of the alleged "150 greatest
Jewish pop songs of all time
"
from the Forward (I'll go along with numbers 1 and 2, but that's
it!).

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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