The Reactionary Utopian
                     March 9, 2006


"TOO GOYISH"
by Joe Sobran

     In Nora Ephron's witty novel HEARTBURN, the 
narrator, a New York Jew, says she could never feel at 
home in Washington, D.C., because it was "too goyish."

     I disagree with her about Washington, but I cracked 
up when I read that. The phrase perfectly captures 
something I've felt many times. You don't have to be 
Jewish to see her point.

     I like goyim, being one myself, but there can be too 
much of a good thing. Take my own family -- please! As a 
boy in Michigan, I used to suffer the most excruciating 
boredom when I was trapped in a houseful of aunts -- nice 
ladies, every one of them -- who were watching Lawrence 
Welk on TV and gossiping excitedly about the Lennon 
sisters. I didn't know the phrase yet, and wouldn't have 
understood it, but that was a perfect example of 
something being "too goyish."

     This may be the chief reason -- unstated, even 
unarticulated -- why young people run away from home. I 
grew up in Ypsilanti, a goyish factory town, but I always 
gravitated to nearby Ann Arbor, which was far more 
exciting and, I now realize, a lot less goyish.

     Later in life, as my journalistic career took me 
around the country, I often found myself in desolate 
places west of the Mississippi where there was nothing to 
read at breakfast but USA TODAY. No bookstores, no NEW 
YORK TIMES except maybe back at the airport. Such places 
are definitely too goyish. Even the Jews there, I regret 
to say, often seem goyish. The entire state of Texas is 
too goyish, except for Kinky Friedman.

     I blame many of this country's current problems on 
the fact that President Bush and Vice President Cheney 
are -- there is no nice way to say it -- much too goyish. 
This makes them easy for neoconservatives to manipulate, 
but it also explains lots of other things. When was the 
last time you heard of a Jew having a hunting accident?

     One could make a long list of famous people who are 
too goyish. George Will, though he is very intelligent 
and has a fine sense of irony, is too goyish. Britney 
Spears is far from brainy and a little short in the irony 
department, but all the more goyish for that. Even 
"George" and "Britney" are nearly always goyish names.

     To some people -- Adolf Hitler is perhaps the 
classic example -- the very idea of something being "too" 
goyish seems a contradiction in terms. As far as people 
like that are concerned, the world can never be goyish 
enough! But I'll bet that if Hitler had been stuck for a 
week in west Texas, he would have changed his tune.

     To me, Jews are like garlic. I wouldn't want to eat 
nothing but garlic, but life would be poorer without it 
giving duller foods its flavor. Too much of a good thing.

     At times, New York City has seemed to me a bit too 
Jewish, and I understand why people call it "a nice place 
to visit, but" et cetera. Some Jews, I'll grant you, 
can't talk about anything but being Jewish, and I suspect 
that two of the chief causes of anti-Semitism are Abe 
Foxman and Alan Dershowitz. Still, you can't blame all 
Jews for them. The Jews are far from perfect, but they 
couldn't possibly be as bad as their defenders make them 
sound.

     Are the Jews ethnocentric? That's like asking if 
they're human. Turn the question around. Is America 
sometimes a little too full of itself? G.K. Chesterton 
had the best comment on that: "The real American is all 
right. It is the ideal American who is all wrong." Amen! 
The same could be said of many nationalities. The real 
people often turn out to be much better than their 
ideals. That's because the real people are human, even if 
their superhuman ideals are actually inhuman.

     Today's exaggerated talk about anti-Semitism -- 
thanks a lot, Hitler! -- may give one the impression that 
Jews are easy to hate. This is itself a kind of group 
libel, as well as a cause of needless anxiety. Is it 
natural to hate George Gershwin, Sandy Koufax, Steven 
Spielberg, and your family doctor? Not to mention a 
thousand great comedians and wits who have kept us goyim 
in stitches for generations? Ignore the politicians and 
professional victims, and look at the achievers.

     On the whole, the Jews have saved this country from 
remaining too goyish. The man who makes you laugh at 
yourself is your benefactor.

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