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Arjewtino
- What? Don?t they serve bread at Mizzou?
- No concussions at this blogger happy hour
- I learned several new words today
- The greatest season finales in history: A Blogger Happy Hour
- It?s the end of Movember as we know it, and I feel fine
- DC Blogs Photography Contest
- Gawker keeps stalking me
- New York City? Get a rope
- Trivia night and absurdity: A Movember Update
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Blogroll
- 23/6
- Average Jane
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- Hey Pretty
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- Roissy in DC
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- The Brooklyn Boy
- Tickle My Kittens
- What Would J. Crew Do?
Credit
I’ve had people call me a “kike” at parties; I’ve been told to “go back to Jerusalem” by homeless guys in San Francisco; and I’ve had co-workers make Holocaust jokes to my face
But this sort of “mild” anti-Semitism (is there such thing as “mild” hate?) has never been a major problem since I tend to chill with open-minded people who are not bigots.
Still, what I wouldn’t give to figure out how to get 1.21 jigowatts of electricity into my flux capacitor so I could go back in time to last Saturday night.
Several friends and I got together at Asylum that night for their 25-cent High Lifes. We had spotted some guy earlier that evening flailing around the biker bar like some ADHD case on Red Bull auditioning for “So You Think You Can Suck At Dancing”. He provided mild entertainment but was otherwise a speck on the windshield of my evening.
Until I left.
Foregoing cheap drafts to watch a boxing match at a friend’s house, I left Asylum around 9pm after which Dancing Guy came to our table and became Heebophobe and All-Around Racist. This prompted our friend Banjo to explain something. With his fist.
Banjo, who is not a Member of the Tribe (MOT) but is now an honorary one in my book, reached across the table and punched the Jew-hater. In the face.
Here is the explanation as provided by my friend Klein during a GChat this morning, edited for brevity, anonymity, and decency:
Klein: [Anti-Semite] came over to our table and sat down
and I have no idea what he was saying there
because I was out with Banjo smoking
and then when I got back he was there
and people looked like they didn’t want him there
I went to the bathroom
when I came back a minute later all the guys were gone
and I was like, “Um, where is everyone?”
and they said “Banjo and that guy got into a fight!”
told me later that the guy, while at the table, was just being weird
they asked where he was from
and he said “Tel Aviv! Haifa! Jerusalem!”
and they said, “Oh, you’re Jewish?”
and he said, “FUCK NO!!!! FUCK YOU!!!”
that’s all I heard about the table conversationArjewtino: man
Klein: so, now I’m back from the bathroom
I see the blond bartender walking the crazy guy out of the bar
I follow behind
Banjo and are half way down the street
the guy sees Banjo and starts walking towards him screaming
“YOU BIG NOSE JEW! YOU POTATO [N-WORD]!”Arjewtino: OH. MY. GOD
Klein: Banjo is behind me screaming at the guy
I’m in front of the guy, shoving him in the chest
pushing him back from Banjo
he keeps screaming racial epithets
Banjo is screaming back
Runjit comes over and starts helping me corral the guy
this goes on for a minute
then two cops come over
Banjo and Shiftless Badger disappear
one cop pulls the guy over and is like, “Ok, calm down. What happened?”
the guy says that Banjo sucker-punched him
the other cop is standing off on the side laughing hysterically at the situation
the cop talking to the guy says, “Look. It is WAY TOO EARLY FOR THIS. Just go home. everything’s fine now.”
at this point, Runjit and I thank the cops and leave
we call Shiftless Badger and Banjo to find themArjewtino: damn, what a night
Klein: and SB is like “Uh, we’re hiding in an ally.”
Banjo don’t dig cops
oh, another thing the crazy guy was saying was that he was a “pure blood Spaniard.”
Now, Banjo and I had pointed this guy out earlier because he was clearly, from 6 pm on, the drunkest.guy.at.the.bar.Arjewtino: yeah, I remember him
Klein: right
so, it was interesting timesArjewtino: I can’t believe I missed a fight with an anti-Semite
Klein: Heather was, apparently, REALLY MAD
Arjewtino: I would have loved to have decked him
Klein: well, I’m upset that I missed the actual FIGHT
Arjewtino: I know, fucking bladder
Klein: Seriously
Arjewtino: You’re like a schoolgirl
Klein: my left arm sez otherwise
My right arm is a bit more school girlish
There might still be time for me to go back in time to relive this fight. A night in jail, to me, would have been totally worth it.
Comments
As my brother and my father have both told me; you’ve never been convicted of anything, so the first one’s free.
Of course, you do hit like a girl…but you could’ve kicked him.
So i made the point at a Black/Jewish summit once that people are much more free with their anti-jewish rhetoric around me because they don’t necessarily know I’m Jewish. If someone says something racist around african americans, they pretty much know they are going to be offending the present company (most of the time), but no so with jews. We don’t wear stars anymore. We don’t all have big noses. And I gave up wearing my horns and tail for lent.
I never had been a party to such rhetoric, however, until a few years back, where within a month two anti-semites went off on jews right in front of me. And what did I do? Not a damn thing. My christian friends wanted to defend me, the Jews, etc. But I just let it go. I don’t know if I pussed out, didn’t want to get beat up, or just figured they were too far gone to reason with.
“If Hitler had finished what he started, there wouldn’t be any of this trouble in the middle east.”
I’ll never forget it.
I don’t think the anti-semitism bothers you as much as the lack of a cool “and-then-the-fists-started-flying-and-it-turns-out-I-am-pretty-good-at-ass-kicking” anecdotes.
Get him, Simon.
@ Average Jane, what they said to you is horrible! That is a truly ugly thing to someone. You did the mature thing by walking away…But just reading that makes me upset, and I’m not even Jewish.
@ Arjewtino, $.25 beer night is the shit! I haven’t been in awhile, but I always leave with a story to tell. None quite as amusing as this, though!
I can see getting upset and punching out someone mocking the Holocaust, since that is insulting victims, but I’m not sure how I would react if someone called me a “kike.” It just seems so old-fashioned. I don’t even know what the hell it means. And the bigger the nose, the more the oxygen.
Oh man, where do I even start with this one.
Coming from a family where no one looks Jewish, I have dealt with shit like this on a constant basis since I was a little kid.
My mother is a green eyed redhead, my dad, me and my 3 siblings all have naturally blonde hair, small noses and a lot of height (I’m the midget at 5′6) with blue or green eyes. We are the epitome of what you would consider Eastern European Aryan looking.
That is actually something my grandmother was able to use during the war. While most of my extended family suffered in concentration camps or were brutally murdered, my grandmother used her “Aryan” looks to hide during the war, something that was almost impossible to do.
I take this shit personally and have never once not flipped out on someone who said something against Jews. I can’t help it, its like my auto button. Negative comment yields psychotic Kassy tirade against perpetrator.
I always end it with this though:
“Isn’t it funny how much more JEWISH you look than me. I would have totally thought you were Jewish too!!”
They love that. 
Usually if people go all racist in my face I tell them that they’re so ugly when they’re angry. For some reason the ugly card really gets to that sort of person and they usually stop what they’re saying, give me a reciprocal insult and walk away. And if they don’t, they usually regret staying anywhere near me. One advantage of growing up in a huge family is that you become a good debater with a huge range of insults that even the assholiest of bigots can’t match.
Banjo is a top bloke.
Jesus, I’ve never really been that privy to anti-Semitism. The worst I’ve heard is people telling a salesperson not to “Jew them down” on the price (and being completely serious.) I, of course, told them to shut the fuck up.
Kind of makes the whole “horse copy-paste thing” a little more poignant now, bra. My apologies.
i’ve never understood people like that. something had to have gone wrong when they were growing up. it’s never even occurred to me to dislike someone based on things like religion or race. of course i was told that being gay was “wrong” but i never actually thought that & i never understood why i should, either.
that guy deserved a beating but in a way you can’t help but feel sorry for someone so lame. how to they live with themselves?
Oh my Yaweh, dude, I totally have a story for you last night where one of my tables was anti-Semitic to me repeatedly.
I told him he was a racist asshole and then treated him like shit the rest of the night. Fuck douchebags, I’m over it.
“You leave a bar early one time and a fight with an anti-Semite breaks out”
This is why you NEVER leave the bar early.
Wow. Just wow. Not only an anti-semite, but with an added dose of 600 year-old racism: “pure blood Spaniard.”
What.an.idiot.
crazy. but I totally support the honorary MOT badge.