The anti-semitic KLINGHOFFER opera - Spin Doctoring at 78 rpm

Most spin doctors are slow and insidious. They toss in their re-interpretations quietly, at 33 1/3rd, nice and smooth. But sometimes an excitable bastard ramps it to 78rpm, and turns up the volume. You're supposed to just accept this loud, insane jibberish...or walk away and let the noisemaker keep going.

Opera is loud and unpleasant enough...it needs to be ramped up with a libretto of grotesque anti-semitism? Yes, the latest opera playing the Met spin-doctors all sympathy to go to the Palestinian terrorists who took over a cruise ship...and ignore the fate of a helpless Jew in a wheelchair who was thrown overboard.

Well, I'm only surprised the libretto didn't actually have an aria in which a terrorist was praised for ONLY throwing a defective Jew overboard, one who was of little use...while sparing his wife...to live in misery and have nightmares for the rest of her life.

The NY Post offers the best, most balanced view of the controversy.

Most of us aren't opera fans. We're not going to see this piece of shit. We know that the operas that most anyone might be able to tolerate (Carmen, La Boheme, Lucia di Lammermoor) were written over 100 years ago. Modern opera SUCKS. It STINKS.

So why care? Because anti-semites and wimps shouldn't get away with slanting the truth. The jerks who go to opera are mostly mewly Liberals and obnoxious Republicans, and neither side should walk away feeling all warm and fuzzy about cloaked cocksucker Muslim bastards who kill to get their way.

There's always been a tendency to blame the victim and lick the ass of the murderer. The murderer, after all, is Mephisto. Mr. Evil. The Bad Guy. The lawless bully we all secretly want to be. We sure don't want to be the victim.

No wonder after most any heinous crime, the fascination goes to a Manson or Ted Bundy. If they aren't treated with awed respect and unhealthy love (those Manson t-shirts...mmm, mmmm) it becomes a soft-hearted moan of "Gee, how did he get that way? Don't use the death sentence..." We've seen that with the cute puppy Muslim murderer who got the cover of Rolling Stone and cries of "Set Him Free" from adoring female teens.

Here we have an affluent audience who will come away figuring Roger Waters (isn't "The Wall" an OPERA?) is the genius truth-teller for saying that Israel is bad and the Palestinians are the oppressed minority. Hey, fuck the JEWS being the oppressed minority for 2,000 years and 6 million dead in Hitler's oven. No, no, no...it's the pooooor Pal-esssss-teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-nians.

Chesler writes: “Klinghoffer” begs us to sympathize with the villains — terrorists....(it) also demonizes Israel — which is what anti-Semitism is partly about today. It incorporates lethal Islamic (and now universal) pseudo-histories about Israel and Jews. It beatifies terrorism, both musically and in the libretto.

Composer John Adams has given the opening “Chorus of Exiled Palestinians” a beautiful, sacred musical “halo,” à la Bach. “Chorus of Exiled Jews,” by contrast, is dogged, mechanical, industrial, aggressive — relentless, military, hardly angelic.

This opera treats 6 million murdered Jews of the Holocaust as morally equivalent to perhaps 600,000 Palestinian Arabs who left during Israel’s founding. They were not murdered, not ethnically cleansed, but rather pushed to flee their homes by Arab leaders who told them they’d return as soon as the Jews had been slaughtered.

“Klinghoffer” does not, of course, mention the at least 820,000 Arab, North African and Central Asian Jews forced into exile between 1948 and 1972. Nor that many Arabs didn’t flee. Today, Israel has 1.7 million Arab Muslim and Christian citizens, about 20 percent of its population.

Jews are willing to live with Muslims and Christians — it is the Arab Muslim leaders who want to ethnically cleanse Jews and other infidels from allegedly Muslim lands... The terrorist sings: “But wherever poor men / Are gathered they can / Find Jews getting fat . . . America / Is one big Jew.”

The terrorists tell us they are “men of ideals,” and that “this is an action for liberation.” Hah. In reality, they didn’t allow Marilyn Klinghoffer, who was exhausted and in pain from colon cancer, to lie down. They forced the passengers to stand under the broiling Mediterranean sun for days and to hold live grenades. Leon Klinghoffer had suffered several strokes. He lacked full use of his hands, his legs were paralyzed, his speech slurred — and this is whom Molqui murders and throws overboard with his wheelchair.

The hijacking of the Achille Lauro was a 14-man Palestine Liberation Organization operation ordered by Arafat and Abu Abbas.

Eight terrorists simply walked out of Italy, claiming a spurious diplomatic status. The rest received sentences that ranged from four to 30 years, with early releases. All were considered heroes across the Arab world.

Choosing to stage “The Death of Klinghoffer” at the Met automatically confers upon it a prestige it does not deserve. The opera betrays the truth entirely and, in effect, joins the low-brow ranks of propagandists against Jewish survival."

There you are.

Facts written without the kind of vitriol some (like me) would've added. That's editorial journalism for you. What's going on at the anti-semitic Metropolitan Opera is pure evil. Why else would they stage an opera about terrorists throwing a Jew overboard...and spin the story that it was for a good cause? Wiping Israel off the map, killing Jews...that's a good cause, according to John Adams? Maybe he and Roger Waters will get together for a new rock opera: "Tear Down the Wailing Wall" or "Tommy...gun the Jews"