A Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Thirty-Five

 I have been preoccupied the past few days, thinking about an episode of a television program that I watched the other night which I feel had some overtly antisemitic content.  I do not want to get into the specifics at the moment, as I want to take some time to write my thoughts in a more well-considered way, but I have been thinking quite a bit about the larger issue of antisemitism in general, and in literature in specific.  It is strange when I think just how fast the antisemitic aspects of classic works were dismissed when I was in school.  Even now, I wonder at how I dismissed the underlying reference to tropes of Jewish bankers in J. K. Rowling's choice to have a single race control banking, describing goblins with Jewish stereotypes like long noses.  In the context of contemporary events, where nazi slogans are being used in support of the president, and when I see celebrities gain fast forgiveness after publicly speaking of Jews as the root of the world's ills, the recognition of having these issues brushed under the rug to a point where even I can dismiss them immediately seems more important.

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