Antisemitism

I have a confession to make. Now this sounds very bad on the surface, but if you hear me out it should (I hope) resolve itself into merely stupid and naive. It's just something that I've never put down in print in all its glory and I thought I should unburden myself of this, not guilt exactly, but embarrassment:

Part of me finds antisemitism funny.

Horrible, I know, but let me explain. First off, it's not the dominant part of me that feels this way. It's in the formative, childlike part of my personality. It goes back to my first exposure to it. Having grown up and lived all of my life in the Pacific Northwest, among middle class Catholics, I really didn't have much exposure to Jews. Now I can't speak for the entire Catholic world, certainly not Mel Gibson, but in the churches and schools that I attended, we were never fed the "Evil Jews killed Jesus" point of view. As far as I could tell, since he had the power to get out of it at any time, Jesus killed Jesus, the Romans helped, and the Jews just happened to be nearby and had a thing for Barabas, whoever he was. That's how my child mind absorbed the information; Having grown up and read a few books, I now realize that's not exactly how the story went, but all I'm saying is I was never indoctrinated by the church with "Jews are bad". Beyond being characters in this boooooring story they made us listen to in poorly ventilated churches with uncomfortable pews, to me Jews were comedians. They were Mel Brooks and Woody Allen and Jackie Mason and Jackie Vernon and Henny Youngman. They were funny and self effacing and intelligent and charming. They were about the least threatening people I could ever imagine. In fact they were people I thought would be pretty cool to hang out with (except for Don Rickles of course). This very well could be why I'm a comedian today. I wanted to be as charming as Gabe Kaplan (Mr. Kotter) when I grew up. When I, somewhere in my preteens, first heard that some people believed that Jews were evil monsters bent on controlling the world, I thought it was a joke. I pictured Woody Allen trying to take over the world, and I figured they had to be kidding. It was too absurd to be true. Like God and Santa Claus and Reaganomics.

Now, having aged and been in the world a bit longer, and met some truly fucked up people, and seen photos of the holocaust, and heard the insane ravings of...well, frankly, a lot of people, I now understand with more than a little embarrassment, "Oh. This isn't just not joke. This is extremely grave. A lot of people genuinely hate Jews for no other reason than their heritage (or in some cases baseless conspiracy theories). People die because of this.". My adult, pacifistic, well read, reasonably educated mind, knows that antisemitism is a terrible, terrible thing. Prejudice makes me extREMly angry and sad. But deep down that little kid that first misunderstood it as a joke (or at worst the sincere beliefs of maybe 5 insane people at most), finds it funny. As an adult comedian, I've really had to be careful of this. Comedy is simultaneously precise and instinctual. Our experience and intelligence tells us what's funny but it's those early formative experiences that tell us what to laugh at. For what it's worth, my Hebrew brothers, I apologize for my naivete.

Ahhhhh, feels good to get that off my chest. Maybe someday I'll tell you all why I think teen suicide music is funny.