Rodger Jacobs writes: Just read what I presume to be the foreword to your Jewish Journalism book and I admit I am still perplexed by your selection of this topic for book, let alone a series of online interviews. It just doesn’t jive with your crucifixion of Frank Del Olmo for his work to advance Latino journalists. Not one bit. If you are intent on setting a different latitude for Jewish journalism then you owe a major public mea culpa to Frank, his family, and his associates for your ugly portrayal of him after his passing for his dedication to “Latino journalism”. You seem to want to have it both ways: you hate the idea of marginalization and yet you embrace marginal themes such as adult entertainment and, well, Jewish journalism.
I think what I have trouble coming to intellectual terms with is the idea of having to compartmentalize anything: Jewish journalism, black cinema, Italian gangsters. There’s journalism, cinema, and gangsters in the culture. When you start slicing off one wedge of the bigger hunk of cheese and begin examining it for deep insights it seems to me that one is playing a game that is aimed at a limited table of interested parties, a form of mental masturbation really. Sure, the essay I sent you about how Fitzgerald’s Catholicism informed his writing is pertinent in a way to what you are writing about but I can guarantee that you did not approach your subject with anywhere near the passion of the writer of that particular dissertation. In point of fact, your stated thesis is : Jewish Journalism Sucks. More bees with honey than vinegar, if you get my drift. Would you want to read a book about, say, Rock Hudson if you knew that going in to the project the writer’s objective was: Rock Hudson was an asshole? Of course not because you know that you’re not going to get a well-rounded presentation of the actor in that book, not when that was the writer’s stated agenda.
Luke replies:
* The book has meaning to me because I am passionate about journalism and Judaism but bored by most journalism about Judaism.
* Nowhere in the book do I call for affirmative action for Jews or for any group, let alone affirmative action based on national origin, ethnicity or race.
* Jews are not a race. They are a people defined by their religion (even though most Jews do not observe the religion, it defines who is a Jew). Anyone can become a Jew while not anyone can become black or latino or asian.
* I didn't criticize Frank del Olmo's work to advance latino journalists as much as I decried the overwhelmingly race-based criteria used to judge his life and work. I think it is far more worthy to devote oneself to values, such as Christian or Jewish ones, than to one's ethnic group. Still, if a Jewish editor at a major secular paper like The Los Angeles Times, was primarily feted for what he had done to advance the cause of Jewish journalists, I as a Jew would not be proud. That is not the primary task of a journalist for a major secular paper. The problem is that Frank had few journalistic accomplishments other than being a savvy player of the affirmative action game at the LA Times, where he was advanced far beyond his capabilities, so he had to concentrate on running his Mexican Mafia.
* My book on Jewish journalism rises and falls on what I get out of the folks who know the subject 100 times better than I do. Sometimes provocation is a good way to get stuff out of people. Sometimes it is not. Either way, I went into my project deadly honest about my feelings on the subject, but I listened hard to what others had to say, even when it contradicted my own views on the topic.
Yes, I would like to do a book about black journalism, latino journalism et al as well, though it would not have the same meaning for me as Jewish journalism.
