This first post comes from falcor, a supporter of NAMBLA, an
organization that calls for the legalization of 'consensual'
sexual relationships between adult men and underaged boys.
Cherry has just gotten mass flamed, so, apparently emboldened by this,
falcor joins a thread Cherry had been in, expecting to get mass support.
He's in for a sad disappointment.
Falcor's post
And here, our self-righteous little pervert gets his answer.
the response
That didn't exactly look like support, did it? Nor was the lack of love
exactly a novelty - here are two slams against NAMBLA predating that
one, the first one being the very post that its author ever greeted
Fred Cherry with!
Yet look at what Cherry is writing, later on. Not only does Cherry
attribute support for NAMBLA to someone who has blasted it in the
previous three posts and elsewhere, but he makes a habit of it. Here
are a few examples (all written after falcor got deservedly blasted in
that first post), in which Fred Cherry explicity calls its author a
supporter of NAMBLA (the North American Man Boy Love Association).
- Here's one example
- And here's another
- And yet another
- and still another, again ...
- we're not even halfway through, yet
- here's some more
- Keep it coming, Fred !
- ... and God bless him, he does.
- more still
- Does he ever get tired of this ?
- He keeps going ...
- ... and going ...
He's the energizer bunny of libel! I particularly enjoyed the way in
which he quoted Penthouse as the source of his information in the tenth
post, because, you know, if it's in Penthouse, it has to be true.
Has anyone broken the news to Fred about the letters, yet?
So, in all of this, have you guessed yet, which small detail did he
forget to mention? Oh, gosh, nothing of major importance, really. Only
that the person that he was accusing of being a Nazi was a passionately
committed Conservative Jew at the time, and militantly open about the
fact, online and offline. Mr. Cherry had been made well aware of this fact
before his accusations began.
If you're reading this, I guess it's time to come clean. Yes, I am that
alleged Jewish Nazi. It's quite a distinction, you must admit.
What an image is conjured up! Me, staring at the screen, looking
faintly wired going, "kill me, kill me, kill me ...". You can't imagine
the frustration. I was the only Jew in my building, and the only Nazi.
What could I do? Here I was, constantly trying to round myself up, only
to discover that I had given myself the slip. It was almost like I knew
that I was coming! We are a crafty race.
What was truly frightening was just how many people online actually
seemed to believe this. To be anti-Israel is not to be anti-Jewish.
Many of the intensely Jewish Hassidim are extremely anti-Israel,
feeling that the establishment of the modern state of Israel, taking
place as it did in the absence of the messiach, was sacriligious.
Would Cherry, and his apologists, seriously wish to argue that the
Hassidim are Nazis, on that basis?
Yet, even this doesn't bring us to reality. I've been vocally
pro-Israel, to the point of notoriety, almost everywhere I've been, since
I was a small child. However, I am not pro-soc.culture.israel. If one
actually reads the excerpt that Cherry quotes, instead of taking his
commentary at face value, one sees why. At the time that I made that ONE
POST, I was badly sleep deprived, and none too rational, because I had
been subjected to weeks of unceasing harassment (during the school year,
no less), because I hadn't responded to Mr. Cherry in PRECISELY the manner
that the regulars wanted me to. I couldn't even sleep without the help
of Ambien, making the unhappy discovery on the night of that post that
I was now hallucinating in apparent idiosyncratic response to the drug.
I notice now, with some mild amusement, that even though I was as high as a
kite on a bad reaction to a prescribed pharmaceutical, I was STILL more rational than any
of the members of the Cabal, because the people I vented my rage on were
still the ones who deserved it; and that even in my delirium, I still
managed to be delirious in a traditionally Jewish way.
Rabbi would have been so proud. 
But,
considerations of semi-coherence aside, I did what needed doing, and that didn't just
mean switching to warm milk instead of sleeping pills. It
meant giving some heat to the people without whose abuse and harassment,
I wouldn't have been in need of the sleep remedy that left me enjoying the
swirling colors of soc.culture.british at 3 am. Sometimes, the words "f**k you"
just aren't enough. I would find great sorrow in the news that Israel had come
to harm. I found great pleasure in the news that I had caused a few people on
that arrogant newsgroup a few nightmares. Anybody waiting for an apology for
that fact is in for a long wait, especially given the fact that none of this
should have come as a surprise for the regulars. As I have since pointed out
in soc.culture.israel, when I took my pound of flesh there back in the mid-1990s,
from a far less reasonable group of regulars than the ones I found there a few
years later, I did so in a traditionally Jewish manner. To cite a quote, I
needed to do no more than reach back and pluck a book off one of my shelves:
"While the languge is simple, it is often violent and earthy. We
had to compromise with this earthiness. Take just the small
matter of the Yiddish curse. There are as many types of curses
as there are people cursing, but the hardest to explain is the
mother cursing her child. The child may be crying because he is
hungry. The mother burts out, 'Eat, eat, eat. All you want to do
is eat. May the worms eat you. May the earth open up, and swallow
you alive'. The mother loves her child, she is only puring out her
bitterness in the only way she knows. But in translation she
sounds like a monster. "
p.x of the introduction to "The Collected Stories of Sholem
Aleichem : The Old Country", translated by Julius and Frances
Butwin, (c) 1946 by Crown Publishers
I would take issue with the impression that the Baldwins might
leave, that the Jewish mother's outburst, taken it its proper cultural
context, reflects a lack of sophistication. Certainly, one shouldn't speak
to children like that in an Anglo-American context. They'd take one
seriously. But in a culture in which such verbal catharsis is commonplace,
the children know that this is all theatre.
Some might deny that this is healthy, but which is worse : to speak of
terrible things (in a more traditionally Jewish manner), or to actually do
them (in a more traditionally Anglo-American fashion)? Wishful fantasies
aside, anger doesn't vanish merely because we pretend that it isn't there.
Do I regret having vented? No. Having vented means that when I look back
on this incident, I may be irritated, but I am not seething with rage. I
have to think that this makes me easier to be around. And pardon me if I'm
blunt, but the Emily Post approach simply doesn't work. One doesn't get
people who are acting insanely to back off by acting sane and friendly
and conciliatory. One gets them to do so, winning for oneself the peace
and quiet that one is entitled to, by scaring the crazies off. Saying this
may not give one a warm and fuzzy feeling, but the traditional Jewish
severity at such moments displays a greater underlying understanding of
the sad realities of human nature, than does the self-righteous carping
of some of the "nice people", who never seem to tire of telling others
what they should have been willing to endure indefinitely, or of expecting
others to live according to their wishful fantasies. If I seem to hold
the norms of "high society" in low regard, it is only because I do.
Cross-cultural criticism aside, though ...
There would not have been the faintest excuse for Cherry to have taken
any of what I had written at face value, were he actually Jewish,
especially given the very traditional cancellation of my malediction
with a qualifier that brought the reader back to reality, at the end.
There is nothing to be said for Jews who play dumb for the sake of
political advantage at the expense of other Jews, counting on the
ethnocentricism and lack of cultural understanding of a mostly Anglo-Saxon
audience.
To take a single quote out of context, as Fred did, written when its
author was barely lucid, furious with good reason, and blowing off steam,
and use it for mudslinging purposes in retaliation for its author's public opposition to one's pet political cause would
be inexcusable. (And, indeed, we will get to see Fred come out and admit that
he is doing just that, citing opposition to the legalization of
prostitution as proof that one is part of the "Homonazi" conspiracy). To
make a career out of that one isolated outburst, making it seem like many
through repetition, as one pursues its author to the ends of the virtual
earth, posting it in so many newsgroups on so many occasions that the
reader will lose count, is unforgivable. Yet, this is what Fred has been
doing to this very day, more than half of a decade later. To this,
what can I say other than ?
Question : So, was this the only person that Fred did this to?
..
Answer : What, are you kidding me?
Click here to return to "The Fred
Cherry Story".
