Sammy Stops Running
Ari Gold, as everyone knows, is copying from the playbook of Ari Emanuel. But Ari Emanuel, and pretty much everybody like him, is imitating, intentionally or otherwise, Sammy Glick. Glick, the poor Lower East Side kid who screws over everyone in his efforts to make it as a Hollywood hotshot, is the protagonist of What Makes Sammy Run, the classic of both American and Jewish literature whose author, Budd Schulberg, just died. It was the book that Schulberg, whose father B.P, was production chief at Paramount, was literally born to write. He was no one hit wonder, and he continued to write important novels and screenplays, including the boxing expose The Harder They Fall (later made into a film starring Humphrey Bogart), and of course, On the Waterfront. Schulberg’s life was not without controversy, and during the 1940’s, he named names before HUAC. While the traditional leftie account of things makes that period one of readily identifiable good guys and bad guys, naming names was not as clear cut as Seinfeld makes it out to be. While there were any number of good reasons why an idealistic young man, like Schulberg himself, would join the party in the ’30’s, there are equally compelling reasons why a disillusioned middle-aged one would turn against it many years and millions of victims of Stalin later. And while HUAC certainly abused its authority, the Party itself had long imposed censorship and squashed dissent among its members (and used their influence against its enemies). Ultimately, though, Schulberg should be judged by the standard of all great writers—not by what he said, but by what he wrote.
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submit a comment08.07.09 at 5:08 pm
While there were any number of good reasons why an idealistic young man, like Schulberg himself, would join the party in the ’30’s
Not really, oh cryptic one. In fact, very “good reasons” not to join THE COMMIES were well understood in the Jewish community by 1923.
Or do you perhaps have one standard for the little people, another for Hollywood machers?
08.07.09 at 6:08 pm
If you were antiracist in the 1930’s, the Party seemed a good choice.
If you were antifascist in the 1930’s, the party seemed a very good choice—Schulberg joined in ’37, when the Party seemed (and I stress, seemed) to be on the frontlines against fascism in Spain.
As for “1923,” it was more complicated than you make it out to be. While the Bolsheviks had begun their campaign against Zionism and Judaism, they were still able to ride a certain amount of goodwill from their relative opposition to pogroms, their openness to Jews (if not Judaism) in many areas of society, and the fact is that, as recent research (read the fascinating book “Soviet and Kosher”) suggests, at least during the ’20’s, they were doing a pretty good job of creating an alternative, communist Jew culture which appealed to many Jews in the Soviet Union itself.
You’re picking a fight with the wrong guy, mrnghts. Communiism was evil and murderous, pure and simple, and insofar as an idealist young man, I joined the US Army during the Cold War in part because as I saw it as my duty to serve my country and oppose it, I don’t think you have anything on me in that regard. But historically speaking, things were not as clear cut as you suggest.
08.08.09 at 8:08 pm
I would call that a smack-down.
08.09.09 at 2:08 am
If you were antiracist in the 1930’s, the Party seemed a good choice.
If you were antifascist in the 1930’s, the party seemed a very good choice
The far-Left of today also seems like a “good choice” if one is to focus solely on such issues. And today as well as in the 20s and 30s, there is no shortage of naive Jewish fools willing to focus solely on such issues to make their “good choice.”
But the majority of Jews always knew better. Those that do not today should not be excused; those of yesteryear should also not be excused. Repentance is appreciated, of course, but there is/was no need for that nonsense in the first place.
at least during the ’20’s, they were doing a pretty good job of creating an alternative, communist Jew culture which appealed to many Jews in the Soviet Union itself.
The largest Yiddish newspaper in the U.S. began an unremitting campaign against Communism in 1923, and it lasted through (and after) the fall of Communism. Do you really need me to pull up the sources to prove that? Or are you willing to say, “Yes, that information was available, and yes, by 1923, there was no longer a really good excuse for an American Jew to join The Party?”
I joined the US Army during the Cold War in part because as I saw it as my duty to serve my country and oppose it, I don’t think you have anything on me in that regard. But historically speaking, things were not as clear cut as you suggest.
Excuse me, but this isn’t about you. This is about “historically speaking,” and frankly, Jewdar, the Leftist side of my family — who were Social-Democrats — absolutely rejected and fought Communism, even as early as the 20s.
My great-grandmother, Lena, worked in a sweatshop, and fought for women’s suffrage and workers’ rights. She did so without joining the Commies. She knew better. Most knew better.
I have no patience for those who join tyranny for the sake of “anti-racism” and “anti-fascism,” and frankly, I am disappointed that a Heeb editor feels the need to push that hippy-babble. Save that nonsense for your JFREJ meeting.
08.09.09 at 12:08 pm
Please note, I didn’t say that it was the right choice to make, only that there were good reasons to do so. And there is also a difference between Old Left and New. Anti-fascism in the 1930’s had a very different meaning in 1937 than in 1967. So did anti-racism. I know you rather bizarrely think that white men are more oppressed in America today than black men were in the 1930’s, but I’m sure most readers would disagree. That’s not “hippy babble,” that’s historical context.
Moreover, and I didn’t go into this, 1937, at the height of the great depression, was not 1927 (or is my suggesting that capitalism wasn’t doing great in the 30’s “hippy babble?”) People looked to extreme solutions during extreme circumstances. If it makes you feel better about my consistency regarding tyranny, I’m fine with saying that there were “good reasons” to support the Nazis in 1932. That doesn’t justify Nazism; it simply suggests that one could have been a support of it in 1932 w/out supporting genocide in 1942.
As for Social Democrats, the Forward, etc., I’m not sure of the point. Yes, most Jews, left and right, rejected Bolshevism. But not necessarily because they saw it as tyrannical, or anti-Jewish. Some did. Some had ideological disputes with it that predated it’s accession to power. Some had economic disputes with it. Some (certainly on the left) were jealous of its success.
I’ve got no problem with cranky historical debates, but do a better job of choosing your targets. I made no apologia for communism, and am happy to say that Schulberg was one of Lenin’s (who, of course, along with Trotsky and Stalin, etc., was a monster) “useful idiots.” But that doesn’t mean that he was an evil idiot. And really, mrnghts, you know that I’m about as far from a hippy as possible.
Finally, would all this unpleasantness go away if we accepted that a “good reason” is not the same thing as “a good excuse?”
08.09.09 at 4:08 pm
GUys, you’re arguing over apples and matzoh balls.
08.10.09 at 1:08 am
If it makes you feel better about my consistency regarding tyranny, I’m fine with saying that there were “good reasons” to support the Nazis in 1932.
Ok. That’s kind of strange, but it is consistent.
As for Social Democrats, the Forward, etc., I’m not sure of the point. Yes, most Jews, left and right, rejected Bolshevism. But not necessarily because they saw it as tyrannical, or anti-Jewish.
No. They knew, and that was the critical issue.
“Russia has at present less freedom than it did in the earliest days of Romanov rule…The world has never see such a despotism.” — Abe Cahan, 1923
http://books.google.com/books?id=N_LbUSH0N1sC&pg=RA1-PA427&lpg=RA1-PA427&dq=abe+cahan+communism+anti-communists&source=bl&ots=L-11CduQTM&sig=yJAj6u7cYy21MuWMX9T53xZqr2Y&hl=en&ei=Cqd_SvW4JoyTtgeg0Oj0AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=&f=false
08.10.09 at 10:08 am
Obviously some people saw it as despotic, and some people saw it as anti Jewish. You didn’t need to quote Cahan to prove that (though, to be honest, your quote doesn’t demonstrate that he thought it was anti-Jewish, only that it was despotic). I simply said that not all its opponents had that problem. Are you saying that all Jewish opponents of the USSR saw it as anti-Jewish? That seems like a tough thing to prove, and I don’t know why you waste time arguing minutiae.
You remind me of this old lady who yelled at me once. I was riding my bike, and the the light changed to red. I stopped to let her cross, but I cross the line, and she berated me for not letting me cross. But it wasn’t me she was berating—it was all the bicyclists that didn’t stop. I just presented a target who would listen to her.
You don’t want to noodge me, nudnik. You want to nudge actual Jewish leftists. Why don’t you save your ire for them, bubbele, and let me get back to my important work of detailing the foibles of Jewish celebrities.
08.10.09 at 6:08 pm
Hmmm…why are we all up in the grill of the Jewish leftists?
08.10.09 at 7:08 pm
Puck, we’re not. Just when they get too radical, they get too much like the far-right.
08.10.09 at 9:08 pm
My comment wasn’t meant to get in anyone’s grill; I just meant that rather than arguing with me, who actually agrees with him about the USSR and the delusions that many Jews had about it, his real issues are with the kinds of people who still think the Rosenbergs were innocent martyrs.
Actually, mrnghts, that shold be your next big thing—go to a JFREJ meeting wearing a t-shirt reading “Roy Cohn Was Right.”
08.10.09 at 9:08 pm
In my experiene people don’t generally pick a political party due to a single issue, but rather a broader raft of ideological compatability. Certainly there are going to be extremists on the left of right that are also Jewish, but no doubt there are many of the tribe who don’t consider their Jewishness to be the deciding factor when determining their political allegiance. There are African-American Republicans and Gay Republicans after all, despite the party certainly being homophobic and arguably a wee bit racist as well.
I have spoken.
08.10.09 at 10:08 pm
That’s great, but are gay republicans good for the Jews?
08.10.09 at 10:08 pm
LOL
Gay Republicans aren’t good for anyone :P
08.11.09 at 9:08 am
Correction, mrnghts—wear that “Roy Cohn was right” t-shirt to Puck’s house.
08.11.09 at 6:08 pm
lol
Yeah come over for dinner sometime…my parents would love you :S