A medium, liminal between two worlds, embraces both of your meanings. Reading this I feel like we’re twins in many ways. I send to hugs and a mind that understands everything you say here. I don’t understand being blind to BS’s odious misogyny. No different than being blind to DJT. 🤮
So many words you’ve written and yet not nearly enough. Your commitment to clarity, to exposing the Emperors with no clothes (nor brains, nor shame, nor soul) falls like music on exhausted, “crazy” ears. I’m so grateful for you. I’m also deeply horrified by what you had to endure on campus so close to your retirement. (I wonder if any of us academics get out of here alive). Consider me friend and ally. Your personal stories parallel many of my own in uncanny ways, especially in how your body tracks the horrors of the world so accurately with pre-diabetes symptoms. I’ve been going thru some personal hell recently to which my body responded with narcolepsy and digestive distress. So, I conducted an experiment. Every time I left home for a day or more, I was able to stay awake in the pink of health. Once returned, however, I would fall fast and deeply asleep all day, waking only to visit the bathroom. Ha! What I thought was food poisoning turned out to be good old fashioned stress, and I am now acting accordingly to eradicate the stress. All of this is to say, Thank You for all you write which scours the darkness with light and helps the rest of us feel seen in a never normalizing world. Strength to your arm!
I too am pre diabetic ( in the USA. In the UK they use a different cut off — because pre diabetes is a condition created by the ADA.) I have suspected my glucose is heavily influenced by my anxiety. Thanks for helping confirm. Also, your writing is gripping. It moves with surprises. Not sure about the typos being very important, or the quibbling about Latin roots, but the other criticism was thought provoking.
Lots to unpack here. First, you’re not alone. Second, media is plural for medium, like newspapers, magazines and TV. Nothing to do with mediate. And third, keep writing!
Thanks! I will try to keep writing. Re. Media, I believe that Medium and Mediate have the same root: “standing between.” That was my point. In the case of tv, etc., medium= the mode by which things are carried from the world to us. As such they “stand between” the world and the reader/viewer.
The Intifada is globalizing fast Susan Bordo because those like you refuse to see Palestinians as human, refuse to see the wrongs done to them for 100 years, and refuse to read outside your comfort zones. Those who think as you do--on Israel and the Jews's feelings of insecurity and threat (because only those feelings matter while millions of others are being bombed so you can feel secure thousands of miles away from Palestinian lands) while supporting land theft, colonization, expulsions, torture, abuse, and various forms of silencing of criticism and now genocide and more silencing -- are in for a rude awakening. It's too bad you haven't been feeling crazy watching a live-streamed genocide the likes of which the world has never seen before.
The Intifada is globalizing fast and faster not only because of the unbelievable atrocities perpetrated by Israel with full American support, not just because of the despicable, bought politicians who put Israel's ethnic cleansing goals before American citizens' wishes and needs; but it's also globalizing fast because of heartless, selfish, self-obsessed zionist Jews like you with your paranoia about antisemitism while colonizing or supporting the colonization of others's lands, homes, even graves, and fully supporting a genocide you refuse to witness.
Information is so globalized the world can see through the genocidal methods, the propaganda methods, the silencing methods, the power methods and the fake fears of Zionists from their safe western wealthy perches as they dehumanize Palestinians, muslims, Arabs and preach and promote and fund genocide. While being so civilized like Susan Bordo, who knows all about trauma and hysteria and emotional pain. But can't see Palestinians as human.
Go crazy Susan, as we are going, but do it by watching Israel and Israelis humiliate, beat, torture, rape, relentlessly bomb Palestinians, as many of us have for decades. Go crazy while you watch child body after child body blown up into pieces, and mothers unable to feed their children, and fathers unable to protect their children. And go crazy watching the starved standing skeletons of Palestinian citizens, starved for being Palestinian, for refusing to die off and resisting through mere existence on their own lands. Go crazy as you let the fact sink in: that you're a Jew supporting a genocide the cruelties of which the Nazi system of the 1940s would have envied.
Shame on you PEP (Progressive Except Palestine) genocidaire for watching only mainstream media and navel-gazing about Jewish fears when Jews are committing genocide and ethnic cleansing.
We cannot wait for your generation of liberal genocidaires to die off. Nobody's going to miss your inability to humanize those who've been dehumanized, and nobody cares about your feminism that doesn't think millions of Palestinian women are innocent people being erased for not being Jewish.
This is part of the Hasbara training we're all expert on: Any pushback, any perspective that doesn't start from the first principle of Israel first and Jewish feelings first is "antisemitic". Keep navel gazing since you're incapable of fairly and objectively interpreting what's been going on for decades and of re-assessing the position of Jews as a class in the west: not the underdog, but the side of the oppressor: from Palestine as colonizer to NYC as landlord of multiple buildings, as billionaire funding corrupt, criminal and regressive politicians, funding silencing and oppression at Columbia, etc. and genocide in Palestine.
To put it differently, Jewish modernity has ended, and you're exemplary of this end, but there's many like you of your generation. You're now a conservative rightwing force in the world (it's not just the neocons, you're all neocons when it comes to Palestinians.). It's not me saying Jews are no longer a progressive force in the West, it's scholars. Check out Enzo Traverso's The End of Jewish Modernity. It explains what you don't understand or believe about being seen as an oppressor.
<<I’m very glad that I retired soon after. If I was still teaching today my misspelling of my middle-eastern student’s name might lead to far worse than the antisemitic undercurrent in that Facebook thread. And had I wanted to discuss the many faces of hatred and suspicion of Jews throughout history, I think I could do so without eliciting a “what about” of some sort, I think my students would have appreciated hearing about my own experiences, both overt and subtle. I think but I’m far from sure. At the time, being branded as an “oppressor” was anomalous to my experience; today, I realize just how much (negative) weight my criticisms of Sanders had hung around my neck for my “progressive” students.>>
I read the first section and was amazed how well I could relate to this. The family (living in Flatbush) was extended and my mother was a southern Baptist met when my father went to Miami to work in a real estate firm. I was brought up to Brooklyn at 6 months. And I was never to know the real reason why, or that my parents split up when I was 21/2 or why...until one of my mothers friends told me some of it when I was in college. The whole story, not until I was 64. The unconscious pattern I had in relationship was only discovered doing EFT sessions...something I osmosed from my mother at 2 1/2. Well...I wish I had known as it could have changed my whole choosing pattern early enough in life to make it count. But I also know my path was there for me and it had to be the way it was. I don't think a lot of immigrant families wanted to talk about the past...mine weren't recently here and my mother's line went back to 1642 Jamestown, but there was hardship and loss that they kept to themselves.
Thank you for the comment and noticing the mistake. I often do that with “no matter”—I think because in my mind “no matter” means “no material thing”. Damn philosophy background!!
Ha. I used to date a lawyer, and she would do a search for all her documents for the word “pubic” because she often slipped and missed the l in Public…
A medium, liminal between two worlds, embraces both of your meanings. Reading this I feel like we’re twins in many ways. I send to hugs and a mind that understands everything you say here. I don’t understand being blind to BS’s odious misogyny. No different than being blind to DJT. 🤮
So many words you’ve written and yet not nearly enough. Your commitment to clarity, to exposing the Emperors with no clothes (nor brains, nor shame, nor soul) falls like music on exhausted, “crazy” ears. I’m so grateful for you. I’m also deeply horrified by what you had to endure on campus so close to your retirement. (I wonder if any of us academics get out of here alive). Consider me friend and ally. Your personal stories parallel many of my own in uncanny ways, especially in how your body tracks the horrors of the world so accurately with pre-diabetes symptoms. I’ve been going thru some personal hell recently to which my body responded with narcolepsy and digestive distress. So, I conducted an experiment. Every time I left home for a day or more, I was able to stay awake in the pink of health. Once returned, however, I would fall fast and deeply asleep all day, waking only to visit the bathroom. Ha! What I thought was food poisoning turned out to be good old fashioned stress, and I am now acting accordingly to eradicate the stress. All of this is to say, Thank You for all you write which scours the darkness with light and helps the rest of us feel seen in a never normalizing world. Strength to your arm!
Julie, I’m off to an appointment right now and will respond better later. Love this comment, am grateful to you, thank you, love you!!
❤️ you back!!!
I too am pre diabetic ( in the USA. In the UK they use a different cut off — because pre diabetes is a condition created by the ADA.) I have suspected my glucose is heavily influenced by my anxiety. Thanks for helping confirm. Also, your writing is gripping. It moves with surprises. Not sure about the typos being very important, or the quibbling about Latin roots, but the other criticism was thought provoking.
Thank you so much!! I like engaging conversation from my posts—except of course, from the toxic folks who are fewer, thankfully, than reader like you.
Thanks for this! I’m always glad to read your writing.
Lots to unpack here. First, you’re not alone. Second, media is plural for medium, like newspapers, magazines and TV. Nothing to do with mediate. And third, keep writing!
Thanks! I will try to keep writing. Re. Media, I believe that Medium and Mediate have the same root: “standing between.” That was my point. In the case of tv, etc., medium= the mode by which things are carried from the world to us. As such they “stand between” the world and the reader/viewer.
The Intifada is globalizing fast Susan Bordo because those like you refuse to see Palestinians as human, refuse to see the wrongs done to them for 100 years, and refuse to read outside your comfort zones. Those who think as you do--on Israel and the Jews's feelings of insecurity and threat (because only those feelings matter while millions of others are being bombed so you can feel secure thousands of miles away from Palestinian lands) while supporting land theft, colonization, expulsions, torture, abuse, and various forms of silencing of criticism and now genocide and more silencing -- are in for a rude awakening. It's too bad you haven't been feeling crazy watching a live-streamed genocide the likes of which the world has never seen before.
The Intifada is globalizing fast and faster not only because of the unbelievable atrocities perpetrated by Israel with full American support, not just because of the despicable, bought politicians who put Israel's ethnic cleansing goals before American citizens' wishes and needs; but it's also globalizing fast because of heartless, selfish, self-obsessed zionist Jews like you with your paranoia about antisemitism while colonizing or supporting the colonization of others's lands, homes, even graves, and fully supporting a genocide you refuse to witness.
Information is so globalized the world can see through the genocidal methods, the propaganda methods, the silencing methods, the power methods and the fake fears of Zionists from their safe western wealthy perches as they dehumanize Palestinians, muslims, Arabs and preach and promote and fund genocide. While being so civilized like Susan Bordo, who knows all about trauma and hysteria and emotional pain. But can't see Palestinians as human.
Go crazy Susan, as we are going, but do it by watching Israel and Israelis humiliate, beat, torture, rape, relentlessly bomb Palestinians, as many of us have for decades. Go crazy while you watch child body after child body blown up into pieces, and mothers unable to feed their children, and fathers unable to protect their children. And go crazy watching the starved standing skeletons of Palestinian citizens, starved for being Palestinian, for refusing to die off and resisting through mere existence on their own lands. Go crazy as you let the fact sink in: that you're a Jew supporting a genocide the cruelties of which the Nazi system of the 1940s would have envied.
Shame on you PEP (Progressive Except Palestine) genocidaire for watching only mainstream media and navel-gazing about Jewish fears when Jews are committing genocide and ethnic cleansing.
We cannot wait for your generation of liberal genocidaires to die off. Nobody's going to miss your inability to humanize those who've been dehumanized, and nobody cares about your feminism that doesn't think millions of Palestinian women are innocent people being erased for not being Jewish.
Free Palestine!
Well if this doesn’t confirm everything I said I don’t know what will. Thank you for providing such a splendid example!
This is part of the Hasbara training we're all expert on: Any pushback, any perspective that doesn't start from the first principle of Israel first and Jewish feelings first is "antisemitic". Keep navel gazing since you're incapable of fairly and objectively interpreting what's been going on for decades and of re-assessing the position of Jews as a class in the west: not the underdog, but the side of the oppressor: from Palestine as colonizer to NYC as landlord of multiple buildings, as billionaire funding corrupt, criminal and regressive politicians, funding silencing and oppression at Columbia, etc. and genocide in Palestine.
To put it differently, Jewish modernity has ended, and you're exemplary of this end, but there's many like you of your generation. You're now a conservative rightwing force in the world (it's not just the neocons, you're all neocons when it comes to Palestinians.). It's not me saying Jews are no longer a progressive force in the West, it's scholars. Check out Enzo Traverso's The End of Jewish Modernity. It explains what you don't understand or believe about being seen as an oppressor.
<<I’m very glad that I retired soon after. If I was still teaching today my misspelling of my middle-eastern student’s name might lead to far worse than the antisemitic undercurrent in that Facebook thread. And had I wanted to discuss the many faces of hatred and suspicion of Jews throughout history, I think I could do so without eliciting a “what about” of some sort, I think my students would have appreciated hearing about my own experiences, both overt and subtle. I think but I’m far from sure. At the time, being branded as an “oppressor” was anomalous to my experience; today, I realize just how much (negative) weight my criticisms of Sanders had hung around my neck for my “progressive” students.>>
I read the first section and was amazed how well I could relate to this. The family (living in Flatbush) was extended and my mother was a southern Baptist met when my father went to Miami to work in a real estate firm. I was brought up to Brooklyn at 6 months. And I was never to know the real reason why, or that my parents split up when I was 21/2 or why...until one of my mothers friends told me some of it when I was in college. The whole story, not until I was 64. The unconscious pattern I had in relationship was only discovered doing EFT sessions...something I osmosed from my mother at 2 1/2. Well...I wish I had known as it could have changed my whole choosing pattern early enough in life to make it count. But I also know my path was there for me and it had to be the way it was. I don't think a lot of immigrant families wanted to talk about the past...mine weren't recently here and my mother's line went back to 1642 Jamestown, but there was hardship and loss that they kept to themselves.
Whew, what a great read.
Typo though. "Nomatter" is two words ;-)
Thank you for the comment and noticing the mistake. I often do that with “no matter”—I think because in my mind “no matter” means “no material thing”. Damn philosophy background!!
Ha. I used to date a lawyer, and she would do a search for all her documents for the word “pubic” because she often slipped and missed the l in Public…