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Sometimes, you run across some nugget online that turns out to be pure gold. 

I found such a nugget on Friday. 





Nicholas Kristof is a columnist at The New York Times and embodies the institution even better than, say, Paul Krugman (who has left, thank God). He is passionate, thoughtful, and immensely prejudiced in the way that good-hearted highbrow people are. He’s conventionally smart, but has the range of vision one has looking through two toilet paper rolls. Only certain things catch his eyes–depending on the issues that matter to the “right” set of people. 

This tweet is a perfect example of that. Kristof is deeply concerned about the people of Gaza and thinks they are being demonized. So when an activist on X wants to appeal to the smart set in New York, he goes straight for the type of thing that really matters to them: the liberal books that can be found in the rubble. 

Kristof is touched by how one of his books was saved from the ashes–this proves that Gazans are not the monsters the nasty Israelis make them out to be! They, too, care about women’s rights and if only given the chance, would fit right in with the right people in Manhattan, not those awful MAGA people.

You can’t be all bad if you own a Kristof book, even if it is obviously uncracked. 

Does it matter that the person discovering Kristof’s book (assuming he didn’t bring it there for propaganda purposes, just as the Pallywood people produce low-budget propaganda about the travails of Gaza) is a raging antisemite?

Of course not. That isn’t the point. Nick Kristof’s book is there! This is prima facia evidence that even raging antisemites are the “right” kind of people. Do you think that Bibi Netanyahu has read Kristof? Unthinkable! 





Omar Hamad knows Kristof’s work! 

That he wants every Jew dead is hardly the point. 

Kristof sees the book, not the man who shows it to us. If Omar holds a Kristof book, he must be a good guy! He knows literature, and literature matters more than Jewish self-defense. The Nazis were bad because they burned books–those pesky Jews mattered, of course, but BOOKS! 

Now I am a books guy, but if I had to choose between the burning of a few copies of literature–it’s not like that is the only personal library in the world–and the rape and murder of innocents, I would choose to prevent the rape and murder of the innocents.

Apparently, that is a sentiment only held by the wrong people. A Kristof book is precious. It is a signal that one is virtuous. 

Kristof is probably not an antisemite, but his moral vision is so constrained that holding up a book, in the way that putting pronouns in your X bio, is sufficient to prove your moral bona fides. 

Hamad knows Kristof’s work. Isn’t that proof enough that he is a good guy? I bet most of those hostages are ignorant boobs who don’t.

SUNDAY SMILES

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