As Forward arts editor Alana Newhouse writes, people have said a lot of things about Judith Regan over the years, but they’ve never called her an anti-Semite. “If a brief scan of Regan’s greatest hits is any indication,” Newhouse writes, “her repertoire of verbal insults brims with stereotyping of all kinds, with nearly every group caught in the crosshairs of her equal-opportunity offending at one time or another. When viewed in the borader context of her personality, it seems obvious that these comments are driven not by authentic prejudice but by a need to provoke and offend.”
Compared to Mel Gibson, Newhouse continues, Regan’s track record doesn’t indicate any sustained animosity towards Jews as a category, no matter what her feelings may have been about Jewish individuals. (And given that Regan once moderated a debate between Schmuley Boteach and the Rules Girls at the Lincoln Square Synagogue, I think it’s safe to say she’s comfortable around Jews.) Here’s the nut graf, IMO: “It’s hard to escape the impression that, though the Simpson book put Regan in a coffin, executives needed one nail to secure it—and they reached for the most powerful one in the toolbox of contemporary discourse.” Or as Jacob Sullum says on the Reason blog: “You see what the charge of anti-Semitism has accomplished? Already I’ve forgotten that Rupert Murdoch thought the Simpson deal was a dandy idea until it blew up in his face.”
(Oh, full disclosure, the article quotes me in support of its argument: “The only reason Judith has for hating people is whether they have done anything to hurt or help her. I don’t think anything else factors into her equations.”)