Sunday, October 14, 2007

The Sad Case Of Debbie Schlussel


In an October 11 post on her website titled "Nice Try, Media Matters Nazis, But Ann Coulter is No Anti-Semite," right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel claimed that Media Matters for America is "anti-American, anti-Israel, and funded by [philanthropist] George Soros, a Jew who proudly worked for the Nazis rounding up Jews and sending them to their deaths." She also described Soros as "the billionaire atheist Jew who's lived his entire life like a Nazi."

To support her claim, Schlussel linked to an April 18 post in which she smeared Soros (a Hungarian-born Jew who survived the Holocaust) as "a fake Holocaust survivor, who -- instead of 'surviving' the Holocaust -- helped the Nazis perpetrate it." In the same post, Schlussel falsely claimed that Soros has funded Media Matters. In a May 1 blog post, she referred to Media MattersNazi-funded," linking to the same April 18 post. as "

In her April 18 post, she cited David Horowitz and Richard Poe's book, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic PartyMedia Matters has noted, during the December 20, 1998, edition of 60 Minutes, interviewer Steve Kroft stated: "My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson." Kroft added, "Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews." Soros responded, "Yes, that's right, yes." He did not "brag[] ... of helping his adopted father round up Jews to send them to their deaths." (Nelson Current, 2006) to claim that Soros is a "war criminal and proud Jewish Nazi." Like Horowitz and Poe, Schlussel pointed to Soros' experience as a 14-year-old boy in Nazi-controlled Hungary to suggest that he collaborated with the Nazis. In that post, she claimed that "Horowitz details how Soros bragged on CBS' '60 Minutes' of helping his adopted father round up Jews to send them to their deaths at the camps and confiscate their property." Taking the smear further, she claimed in her October 11 post that Soros personally "round[ed] up Jews and sen[t] them to their deaths." As

Michael T. Kaufman wrote in a biography of Soros, Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire (Knopf, 2002), that Soros' father attempted to protect his family from Nazi persecution by paying an employee of Hungary's Ministry of Agriculture named Baumbach to take in Soros, "ostensibly as his godson." Soros accompanied his "godfather" as he went to oversee the confiscation of property from Hungarian Jews, as Media Matters has noted.

In the October 11 post, Schlussel was responding to controversy over right-wing pundit Ann Coulter's October 8 interview with CNBC host Donnie Deutsch in which she asserted that "we" Christians "just want Jews to be perfected," as Media Matters documented. Schlussel said of the October 8 edition of Deutsch's show, The Big Idea, that "one of the two viewers watching this incredibly boring show was a Media Matters monkey trained to tape Ann's every word and think of ways to twist it."

Schlussel also wrote in her post, "I believe Donny Deutch [sic] was lying about his own religious status" in the interview, and that she "doubt[s] that" he is a "practicing Jew," because "his show is on live during the Jewish Sabbath, and keeping the Jewish Sabbath is the most important commandment for a religious Jew to keep." During the interview, Coulter said to Deutsch: "Well, you could be a practicing Jew, but you're not." Deutsch responded: "I actually am. That's not true. I really am."

Additionally, Schlussel claimed, "True religious Jews are not offended by Ann's comments," and added, "It's only the Jewish libs, like Deutch [sic], who are feigning this shock and outrage. That's because she's a threat to their real religion: liberalism."

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