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Aug. 16, 2006 One of the strengths of Useless Knowledge is also its weakness. No opinions, no matter how unpopular or offensive, are squelched. And this is as it should be because popularity is not always synonymous with justice. However, there are columnists who write crackpot lies day after day and a websurfer unfamiliar with the site would likely read one of these columns and discredit the rest of us automatically, never returning and if asked about U-K, would simply dismiss the whole thing as so much trash. Our extant most frequent contributor is Thomas Keyes and unfortunately, he's the biggest crackpot of all. I went back and studied some of his columns and the following is a collection of foolish notions--the best, the funniest that Thomas Keyes has to offer. Mr. Keyes is a card carrying believer in stereotypes. He professes to love Arabs, yet in his very first column he wrote, "Arabs have a fundamental inability to organize." Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia may be despotic dictatorships, but they seem like well organized countries to me. In another column he writes that Eastern Europeans make model citizens and perfect blue collar workers. I'm sure they'd be glad to hear this, though my many Slavic friends would find this a bit condescending. Both of my neighbors are African-American. I wonder what they would say, if I marched over to their houses and said, "hey, you know, you black people make model citizens." Mr. Keyes points out that there is a higher percentage of criminality among black people. One wonders why this is worth mentioning, this naked meaningless statistic. What's his point? Once his love of stereotypes is known, we all understand that he's saying Arabs are innately disorganized, Eastern Europeans are hard working blue collar workers, blacks are mostly criminals, and Jews are crafty (his own words). Sounds like an interview with a member of the KKK. Mr. Keyes has a bad habit of giving naked meaningless statistics without putting the numbers into historical context. It may be true that percentage wise blacks are convicted of more crimes, but Mr. Keyes is silent about the reasons. He doesn't discuss poverty and discrimination and racial profiling; factors that skew these statistics. The same is true for the statistics he uses in his obsessive anti-Semitic rants. The proof of this obsession is the number of columns written attacking Jews and Israel's right to exist. Among these columns is one where he baselessly accuses Jews of using the holocaust to pressure the Nobel Prize Committee to award them more prizes. This is laughable. With all the problems in the world Jews take the time to make sure they win that prize. To support this crazy notion, he cites statistics showing the increase per capita in Jewish Nobel Prize winners since World War II. He ignores the historical context. Before World War II there was more discrimination and many world universities wouldn't hire Jews, even in the U.S. and especially prestigious ivy league schools. Now, there are more Jewish scientists in universities and they shine. Before 1947 there were no black players in the major league all-star game. After 1947 there were many. Same reason. Mr. Keyes thinks there is a pro-Israeli bias in the American media. To prove this he again cites naked meaningless statistics. Israel is mentioned more than other countries. So in his mind, just mentioning Israel is somehow evidence of bias. He doesn't discuss the reasons why Israel is mentioned more often. Israel is simply more newsworthy. There are frequent wars and almost daily terrorist attacks. More supposed proof of a pro-Israeli bias in the American media comes from his own statistical analysis of the television news executives and newspaper publishers of which he shows there is a high per capita number of Jews. (Now, he claims he's never written that the Jews own the media, yet he uses terms like "Jew-run CBS.") Once again he gives no historical context and moreover he assumes there is a conspiracy of Jews controlling the news though he denies calling it a conspiracy--he claims the bias is automatic. Around the turn of the century, the profession of acting and the fledgling film industry were considered seedy cousins of prostitution and other unsavory vocations. Mainstream Americans looked down on both. Meanwhile, Jewish immigrants were poor and faced with discrimination. Although the entertainment industry was considered the lot of lowlifes, Americans were paying money to be entertained. Jewish businessmen found they had the entertainment industry to themselves and they took advantage of it. Jews gravitated to the business and in some cases their children inherited much of it. News is part of the entertainment industry. This occurred long before Israel became an independent nation. The preponderance of Jews in the news media is not evidence of bias. Evidence of bias would be one-sided reporting. I've seen no evidence of pro-Israeli bias except on Fox (owned by Rupert Murdoch--not a Jew). CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC always give equal time to Arab leaders no matter how ridiculous their lies. Recently, I've seen American reporters on CNN unfairly and with hostility question Israeli leaders about civilian casualties in Lebanon and two of their reporters inside Lebanon openly questioned Israel's "senseless" bombing campaign. I challenged Mr. Keyes to come up with examples of pro-Israeli bias in the news media. He ultimately failed. He wrote a column listing one study by a pro-Arab website and some op eds, most written for a Jewish periodical which people would expect to be biased. This proves that he doesn't understand the difference between news and editorials. No wonder he's so easily duped by crackpot conspiracy theories such as the Jewish media manipulated the U.S. into war with Iraq because, "Palestine is overcrowded and Israel was looking at Iraq." (Jan 23, 2005) He's claiming Israel wants to colonize Iraq--a totally unfounded lie and ridiculous beyond belief. He's suggested Chaim Weitzman precipitated U.S. entry into World War I so England would win and take Palestine away from the Ottoman Empire and ultimately hand it to Israel. I think everyone can read a history book and learn that Israel had nothing to do with America's entry into World War I. And Mr. Keyes even claims Jews are not Jewish, that they converted Ukrainians of the Khazarian Empire in the ninth century. Genetic tests prove this is entirely false. European Jews descend from Middle Eastern stock and have had little mixture with gentiles and actually are closely related to Palestinians. He accuses me of childish name calling when I wrote that his ideas were paranoid. He's called me (and others) "a simpleton, an impertinent little smart aleck, frivolous, and unreflective." (Notice the pompous quality of his insults.) I wonder. Does he consider himself childish? I disagree with eighty percent of columns written by other columnists here at U-K, but Thomas Keyes is the only U-K columnist I'm ashamed to share my name with. ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. www.mark-gelbart.com Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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