It’s a testament to the current moribund state of American popular culture that its most talked-about moment occurred not on stage or on screen but during an otherwise perfectly banal Red Carpet interview.
Attending the premiere of the new Israeli film The Wedding Entertainer as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, one of its stars, comedian Elon Gold, was asked by Internet influencer Lizzie Savetsky to comment on the fact that a movie made in the Jewish state made it into one of the world’s most prestigious cinematic showcases.
Gold said it was an honour, and then cracked a joke: “I was only raped by two Israeli dogs,” he said, a reference to the scandalous recent New York Times column alleging that the IDF had trained canines to sexually harass Palestinian detainees.
Almost immediately, the self-appointed guardians of good taste rose up to condemn the comic.
“Sexual violence and human suffering should never be mocked or minimised,” read an official and strongly worded statement by the festival’s directors. “The comments do not reflect the Tribeca Festival’s values, and we regret the hurt and offence they have caused.” Media outlets, from the Times to New York Magazine, featured the story prominently, portraying Gold as a cruel vulgarian cheering on the plight of innocent Palestinians. And, behind closed doors, American Jewish communal leaders, too, argued that Gold’s quip did much damage, and that the fight against antisemitism was one that could only be won with great dignity, civility, and restraint.
As Lenny Bruce might’ve put it: Bullsh**.
The late, great comedian understood that Jews, from Moses to Joey Ramone, were consummate outsiders. We were never the ones basking in the warmth of a gentle consensus – instead, we were the fierce weirdos standing at a distance, shouting out inconvenient truths. Heck, it’s in our very name: we’re called Hebrews, or Ivrim, after our forefather, Abraham, the ultimate outsider, who stood on the other side, or ever, of the river, telling a pagan society the good yet unwelcomed news about the oneness of God.
Bruce understood this idea innately, which is why his act was thick with jokes that made audiences squirm: they were hilarious because they were brutally honest. The Marx Brothers, too, were giddy outsiders, giving us that famous zinger about not wanting to be members of any club that would be foolish enough to admit them. Ditto Mel Brooks, whose films endure the way few comedies do because they shred the soft bigotries that less courageous, creative, and brilliant artists dare not point out.
And now, we welcome Elon Gold, too, to this band of happy warriors.
With his dog rape joke, the comedian did two things very much worth doing.
First, he reminded us what it was that made Jewish humour great to begin with. And we desperately need a reminder: these past two decades, the biting tradition of comic irreverence that animated so many of the masters, from Don Rickles to Joan Rivers, was replaced by the murmurs of milksops who care much more about being embraced by the arbiters of taste and political correctness than they do about speaking truth to power.
Jon Stewart, to name one obvious example, mastered the cadence of the great Jewish satirists of old, but then used it exclusively to serve the political ambitions of one particular party. Ilana Glazer, the star of the hit show Broad City, got famous by portraying herself as a repulsive and over-sexualized woman-child, and quickly graduated from telling gross-out jokes to droning on about the evils of Israel. Even Sacha Baron-Cohen eventually fell in line, delivering a Borat sequel that felt like a collection of Democrat Party-approved talking points. Against this backdrop, Gold’s joke, crass as it might’ve been, landed like a breath of fresh and daring air.
Which leads us to Gold’s second, and grander, achievement: by using his elevated platform to deliver crude and cutting mockery, the comedian made it clear that the era of polite and flustered Jews eager to engage their detractors in civil conversation is over.
Commenting on Jew hatred, Jean-Paul Sartre once famously noted that the anti-Semite doesn’t accuse the Jew of theft because he believes the Jew had truly stolen something, but rather because he craves the satisfaction of watching the Jew indignantly empty his pockets to prove his innocence. For years, decades even, America’s Jewish organisations and leaders have been engaging in vigorous pocket-emptying, investing a fortune in trying to convince Jew haters that their allegations are erroneous. And the more sound and voluminous the facts and figures they provided, the more the haters doubled down on their vitriol, because hate, as any child could tell you, needs no sound reasons to simmer. If you want to extinguish it, you must meet it not with heartfelt attempts at persuasion, but with a cold shower of four letter words that meet prejudice with the scorn it deserves.
Every Jewish organisation even marginally involved in communal outreach should invite Elon Gold as a paid speaker. They should learn how to meet insane allegations – Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent! The Jews drove America into war with Iran! – with the brutal and hilarious disdain they deserve. And they should learn, too, that there’s much more to be gained by standing outside the theatre and speaking the truth than by sitting inside, comfortable but silent.
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