"Korean comic author: Jews rule U.S."

Red Herring

"... and fish rule the heavens."

(Image from Wikipedia)

Looks like this story is going to go on and on.

From the CNN report "Korean comic author: Jews rule U.S." (February 26, 2007), Rhie Won-bok, aka Lee Won-bok (aka "Rhie-Lee Won-bok"?), seems to be digging himself an even deeper hole:

The author of a best-selling comic book series [-- i.e., Far Countries, Near Countries (먼나라 이웃나라, which CNN transliterates as Meon Nara, Yiwoot Nara) --] intended to teach children about other countries said Monday he would change a chapter on Jews that has been called anti-Semitic and similar to Nazi propaganda.

Rhie Won-bok maintained, however, that his depiction of Jewish control of American media and politics was based on fact and "commonly believed."

"The Jews are the invisible force that controls the U.S.," Rhie, a professor of visual arts at Duksung Women's University in Seoul, told The Associated Press. "I wrote the chapter to let people know that you can't understand the U.S. without knowing the Jewish community."

This calls for a Pynchonesque analysis, so let's recall "Proverb 5" from Gravity's Rainbow:

"Paranoids are not paranoids (Proverb 5) because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, f**king idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations." (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, Penguin, 2000, page 297)

Really, Won-bok seems to be putting himself deliberately into a paranoid situation by positioning himself in the hurricane's eye of publicity. The storm of criticism that he'll see gusting about him will likely confirm him in his views on the Jews. Since he believes that "The Jews are the invisible force that controls the U.S.," then he'll also believe that the Jews are manipulating the bad press that he's currently getting.

Really, Won-bok will begin to see conspiracies everywhere, much like the anonymous commenter -- quoted in yesterday's blog entry -- who imagined that I must be Jewish or married to a Jewish woman because of my blog entries on this issue. Only someone belonging to the Great Jewish Conspiracy would criticize antisemitism, right? Any anti-antisemite must therefore be a Semite, right? To criticize antisemitism is thus to reveal one's "true identity" -- especially if Douglas Adams gets dragged fishibly across the trail of identity like a red herring.

Hat-tip that red herring all the way to Marmot's Hole for more on the issue...