If I have got Lox wrong - of course I apologise - he wasn't the target of this thread anyway, it was scumbag Tiernan, along with Manning,
Davidson and all the other scumbags who abuse their privileged position in the public eye to display their low-forehead mentality with racist humour (sic).
The first time Tiernan emerged as a 'satirist' was in defence of his racist outburst, and to accept that excuse is, to my mind, excusing his outburst or being extremely náive - take your pick.
As for closet racism being a "nonsensical insult" - go and thumb your way through similar threads and see how many posting begin "I'm not a racist but....." - they are as real as Tiernan's anti- Semitism as far as I'm concerned.
If I over-reacted - perhaps I'm not alone; personally I find "whingeing liberal" and "rabble rouser" offensive and somewhat spineless lines of argument - but there you go, maybe that's just me!
Racism is NOT a historical phenomenon; something that happened to Jews in the first half of the 20th century; it has always been with us and it's on the rise again - go and have a look at who is winning elections nowadays. During our work with Travellers we got a chance to see it up close - even experienced it personally on a couple of occasions for simply 'being there'. It is a tolerance of racism towards Travellers that is enabling the present 'ethnic cleansing' campaign that is taking place here in Ireland at the present time. Racism is inhuman, lethal even (go and ask Stephen Lawrence's parents) - it certainly isn't funny.
Jim Carroll