Thirty-one years after the founding of what was intended to be the nationally definitive model for a community newspaper, America’s second largest Jewish population, Los Angeles, remains homeless, denied a genuine communal newspaper.
The observation arises because the egomaniacal far left editor, under cloudy circumstances, mercifully departed after last week’s edition.
Says he doesn’t know where he is going. We would like to know where he has been.
A routine reading of each Friday’s edition fails to yield a clue about what the community is talking or exorcised about.
Fifty-one times a year, the far left Jewish Journal spits on religious Jews, treats them with contempt, the ugly disdain of traitors to left-wing politics.
The exception, the 52nd Friday, is Purim, when non- and anti-religious Jews on staff maturely hook their thumbs into the ears and make fun of nearly everyone.
If you are schlepping an anti-Israel notion, the Journal happily will provide a visible garden for its planting.
Far more hardline political than even remotely religious – barely Jewish – the Journal has been a reliable and voluble repository for crackpot experiments that have streaked across the whackiest social spectrum.
Through the 58 pages of last week’s edition, you never would have known a single Orthodox Jew resided in Los Angeles.
The Jewish Journal is a rat’s nest for crackpot political leftists, religiously immune haters.
In his massive two-page anti-self-effacing tribute to his 23 years at the newspaper, the self-adoring editor – who may have secretly wed himself – salutes his predecessor for taking the Journal to the left-most precipice.
While committed Jews across Los Angeles cringed or cried, the editor chortled about Gene Lichtenstein, the, uh, former editor. “Gene accepted men-seeking-men ads long before the mainstream papers did,” said the editor who reportedly wears two mirrors to catch himself coming and going.
“After he left, we were the first Jewish paper (to vigorously endorse and) run cover stories on gay marriage and transgender Jews.”
Needing a justification, the Me-Too editor dipped into his nearly empty cup of wisdom and proclaimed that “Religion that doesn’t wrestle with contemporary issues belongs in a museum, not a newspaper.”
From above, G-d said “thank you for the reminder.”
Saving his best sucker punch for the penultimate paragraph, Me-Too bellowed:
“So now comes the time for my personal evolution. I do hope we can keep in touch. After all, I plan on staying in L.A. and, more than likely, remaining Jewish.”
Said G-d: “No comment.”