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Pious Perverts See other Pious Perverts Articles Title: Philip Roth, be Ashamed of Yourself I don't know how Philip Roth remains upright, the way his moral compass is spinning so madly. The author, who made his name with the semi-pornographic Portnoy's Complaint, which titillated a 12-year-old me and my classmates so much the teacher confiscated the book, has now with his current novel, The Plot Against America, spun himself right into a place where good is evil, and evil, good. I'll wager that George Orwell would have seen Roth's book as an example of Lies are Truth, Ignorance is Strength and War is Peace (and in Roth's case, Cowardice is Bravery). The novel is odious, libelous and just plain disgusting. Maybe we need a neologism: "libelodious." More cheerful is the idea of using Roth's name, as in "He Rothed him," meaning "a truly dishonest and reprehensible man told blatant and transparent lies about a good man." The man libeled is Charles Lindbergh, who was about as close to a true hero as America produced in the 20th century. Roth libels him as a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semite, and a crypto-Nazi just waiting, faster than an eyeblink, to turn into the hillbilly version of Hitler. Roth also libels America, which he apparently believes is always on the verge of toppling into a kinder, gentler Nazi Germany. Actually, he libels everything west of New York City as a horrifying, undifferentiated mass of drooling, gap-toothed, tobacco-juice-spittin', banjo-playing, five-year-old-girl chasin' troglodytes jes' awaitin' to lynch Jews from the nearest tree. The focus of evil in Rothworld is Kentucky, a place which to him takes up 90% of Flyover Land. I get the impression Roth truly believes that if he was to ever leave Brooklyn, everyone west of it would have eyes about an inch apart, and drag their knuckles on the ground when they weren't picking their noses or hitching their crotches up in public. I guess he believes Kentucky is the breeding chamber for those hundreds of millions of Morlocks overrunning America. The Plot Against America is actually a very bad science-fiction novel, of a sub-genre called "alternate history." Roth should have stayed with his specialty, "quasi-pornography written by a dirty-minded neurotic Jew who cruelly verbally abused his ex-wife and her daughter, was an addict, and checked himself into mental institutions." In Plot, Charles Lindbergh beats FDR for the nomination in 1940, and becomes President. Now would have happened if this eminently sane event had come to pass? Lindbergh, a true patriot who was an anti-interventionist in the mold of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, would have kept the US out of World War II. There would have been peace, Roth forbid. Instead, in Roth's confabulations, Lindbergh instantly turns a compliant America into the Hillbilly Reich, the inhabitants of which immediately start whoopin' and yeehawin' because they don't have to send their sons to die in another European war, and instead let their anti-Semitic bloodlust, which Roth thinks is in their DNA, take control of their 70 IQ heads. Roth will have none of this peace-mongering. He writes of FDR, who really was a semi-fascist and pro-Communist, as a great President unfortunately voted out of office by people who should have been grateful he was going to get them disassembled as cannon fodder by the hundreds of thousands. In reality, FDR maneuvered the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor by cutting off their oil and sending the Flying Tigers against them in China. There is substantial evidence he knew Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked – indeed, he moved the fleet there from the safety of California – and wanted war with Japan so Stalin (whom he called "Uncle Joe") wouldn't have to fight a two-front war against the Germans and Japanese. If Roth knows about any of this, I'm sure he doesn't believe it. Or if he does believe it, perhaps he agrees with it. Lindbergh, who was fine writer and speaker, is portrayed as having even less ability to speak than the Howdy Doodyish George Bush. He starts a program with the improbable name of "Just Folks," in which city boys are sent into the country to be Nazified. They return from this hillbilly Dante's Inferno to the city with a taste for ham and bacon, the Devil's Food, which instills in them an accent straight out of Deliverance. Roth not only loathes the Midwest, which in his mind starts one millimeter west of the Hudson River, he also loathes Catholicism. I'll have to admit I've never read a novel in which all those Catholic Nazi hillbillies infesting Kentucky join the Ku Klux Klan and break out the kerosene-soaked crosses they've been hiding in their basements. There are even anti-Semitic riots in St. Louis, a place in which I have lived, and where the only semi-riots occurred when the German consulate hung a Nazi flag outside their window, and the gathered crowd got so upset the police had to be called. But Roth does not know these things, having created history out of his head. The novel is so preposterous and surreal it's hilarious. I mean, anti-Jewish pogroms in Cleveland? What next, death camps run by the Simpsons, with Lisa as She-Wolf of the SS? I won't give the ending away, except to say that Roth gets to engage in his version of genocide against all those inbred 'Tuckians. I'll also say he has gotten the truth backwards and upside down, and in doing so has written a truly repellent anti-Christian, anti-American novel, one of the worst I have ever read. The man should be ashamed of himself. Ask yourself this: would you rather live in a nation of Philip Roths -- or Charles Lindberghs?
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#2. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
I do get tired of this portrayal of white gentiles by our media. If a non-Jew were to defame Jews in such a way there would be a huge uproar and cries of antisemitism, but of course people like Roth have one set of rules for themselves, and another for gentiles. I wish people like Roth would just move to Israel if they feel so persecuted by something that doesn't even exist. I wish all with this brand of insanity would move there and leave us alone.
This is the incontrovertable truth. I'm sure the NY Times will review the book as "Zany and Fun". Hey Phil, El Al is ready when you are.
Most reviewers swooned over the book. A few, on the other hand, saw it exactly for what it is -- repulsive.
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