Here's your daily link to Dave McKenna's brilliant "Cranky Redskins Fan's Guide to Dan Snyder," which we'll be posting until Dan Snyder's dumbass libel suit is walked to slaughter under an angry moon.
How this escaped our attention, I do not know: Last month, Washington Jewish Week, a DC-area weekly, ran a story looking into whether the be-horned Dan Snyder image the Washington City Paper published (and which you see republished above) was anti-Semitic. This was the view espoused by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
The view of sane human beings is the opposite. In fact, 94 percent of the people who responded to an informal online survey by Washington Jewish Week didn't find the image anti-Semitic. (For what it's worth, 89 percent also said they thought the media treat Snyder fairly.) I can't imagine who the regular readers of Washington Jewish Week are, but they probably have a decent grasp on what constitutes anti-Semitism.
The writer, Debra Rubin, called up a few experts to get their take. She first quoted Deborah Lipstadt, who only happens to be an anti-Semitism expert and a professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University:
I don't see it as an overtly Jewish thing.
Then there was David Friedman, who merely works as the director of the Anti-Defamation League's Washington region and said that Dan Snyder is "being demonized because people are angry about his ownership, not because he's a Jew," while also noting that there's nothing in Dave McKenna's article to suggest anti-Semitism nor did McKenna even mention in his piece that Dan Snyder is Jewish.
After that came Ron Halber, who really isn't qualified to comment on Jewish matters outside of his role as executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Committee of Greater Washington:
[The image] does not strike me as anti-Semitic, and I have a very sensitive antenna for anti-Semitism.
And finally there were the non-official types. The relevant section from the original story:
Some commenters who disputed Snyder's allegation noted that he is only marginally involved in Jewish community affairs - although he is a member of the Conservative Congregation B'nai Israel in Rockville and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington's Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
'Snyder has a hard time publicly acknowledging that he's Jewish to begin with, so his charge is surprising,' said one respondent.
In an interview, D.C. resident Ezra Weinblatt, 32, said he found it 'contrived' that Snyder 'is using his Judaism as an opportunity to attack this newspaper that attacked him. There are so many business leaders we have in the Jewish community who are supportive of the Jewish community and he just seems to be absent.'
Longtime Redskins fan Sara Polon, 33, said it was Snyder himself who brought his Jewishness into the mix. 'I think he's sinking to a new low,' said the D.C. resident. 'You don't want to throw around anti-Semitic accusations like that. It's a dangerous path to do down. ... If every time someone disparages a Jewish person and the automatic reaction is anti-Semitism, it makes Jews look foolish and defensive.'
Please help the City Paper stop Dan Snyder from making Jews feel like Dan Snyder might be making them look foolish and defensive with a donation to the weekly's legal defense fund.
The devil made him do it? Snyder sees anti-Semitism, but few others agree [Washington Jewish Week]