Literary Corner: Rodolfo

Extracted from Olivia Nuzzi's remarkable report on brunch with the president's personal attorney, at Jean-Georges Vongerichten's restaurant in The Mark Hotel on Madison at 77th (he ordered an omelet with extra-crispy bacon and a Bloody Mary, which is going to run you something over 50 bucks and not what I'd be ordering at those prices, I'll tell you right now):

Song of George Soros

by Rudolph Giuliani

Don’t tell me
I’m anti-Semitic
if I oppose him.
Soros is hardly a Jew. 

I’m more of a Jew than Soros is.
I probably know more about —
he doesn’t go to church,

he doesn’t go to religion —
synagogue. He doesn’t
belong to a synagogue,
he doesn’t support Israel,
he’s an enemy of Israel. 

He’s elected eight anarchist
DA’s in the United States.
He’s a horrible human being.

It's not anti-Semitic for a Catholic to hate a Jew if he disagrees with the Jew's theology?

I was just telling somebody the other day that atheism is the most Jewish thing there is. Atheism was probably invented by Jews, given that the poet calls it out in Psalm 14 (probably composed in the early 6th century B.C.E., if I'm reading this right), calling atheists "fools", but not takfiring them as non-Jewish. One of the things Rudy knows is that "church" is the wrong word, as you see, but he doesn't know it quite fast enough.

Another one of the most Jewish things there are is not supporting Israel, especially the current government at any moment in the country's history, at which at least half the population, Jewish and Arab and Druze alike, is normally violently enraged, but general opposition to the whole Zionist idea is a Jewish thing as well across the political spectrum, from the ultra-conservative Haredim who regard it as blasphemy, since the Messiah hasn't shown up yet, to the socialists and anarchists who see fascism in the concept of a state founded exclusively for one ethnic-religious community, a "Jewish state" as if a country could have a circumcision and bar mitzvah.

Oh right, anarchism is pretty Jewish too, though Americans often think of it as primarily Italian. Soros really did spend $3 million on district attorney races in 2016—seven, not eight, but as you can imagine, they were probably not anarchists, since if you're opposed to a legal system that guarantees property rights you won't be able to do the job at all in the normal way, but

African-American and Hispanic candidates for these powerful local roles, all of whom ran on platforms sharing major goals of Soros’, like reducing racial disparities in sentencing and directing some drug offenders to diversion programs instead of to trial.

according to Politico's excellent piece by Scott Bland on the effort. Ideas that have more recently been adopted by such anarchical figures as the Texas House delegation and—oh, Donald Trump. Who's not an anarchist but a nihilist, and probably not Jewish in any sense, but you get the picture. Happy Hanukkah!

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.