Did I Mention Her Eyes Slant, Too?
Kakutani is a one-woman kamikaze...She disdains white male writers, and I'm her number one favorite target. One of her cheap tricks is to bring out your review two weeks in advance of publication. She trashes it just to hurt sales and embarrass the author. But the Times editors can't fire her. They're terrified of her. With discrimination rules and such, well, she's a threefer...Asiatic, feminist, and ah, what's the third? Well...let's just call her a twofer. They get two for one. She is a token. And deep down, she probably knows it.
-- Norman Mailer in Rolling Stone
2 comments:
La Kakutani
Oops, he did it again. Jewish-American novelist Norman Mailer, a
grumpy old fart at 82, took a swipe at Japanese-American literary
critic Michiko Kakutani in a magazine interview recently. [PHOTOS OF
BOTH HERE: http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/323790p-276748c.html]
Kakutani, 50 and the daughter of a retired Yale maths professor who
came up with the "fixed point theorem," is a Yale graduate and has
been a book reviewer for the New York Times for over 25 years, even
winning a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1998. In the interview,
Mailer, whose books have often been dismissed by Kakutani, used
several racist and politically incorrect terms, calling the Times
reporter a "one-woman kamikaze" and an "Asiatic, a feminist," who was
a "token" minority hire at the popular newspaper. This led the Asian
American Journalist Association
[http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000972112]
to issue a protest letter over Mailer's "racist" comments. So who is
Michiko Kakutani? Click here [http://kakutani101.blogspot.com] and read
an informal, gossipy blogsite about her.
One thing that surprises me is that nobody has brought up the fact
that Mailer is himself Jewish, and as a Jew, he should know about
prejudice and bias and discrimination. Why has the media politely left
this part of the story out? Mailer, a Jewish-American writer, raps
Kakutani, a Japanese-American critic (she was born in the USA, too,
her mom was born here too. Her Dad came from Tokyo) by calling her
"Asiatic" and a one-woman kamikaze" [WWI suicide pilot from Japan]!!!
That is so terribly racist on Mailer's part, why has no one spoken of
this in the media? Jewish Mailer should know better! It wasn't so long
ago, back in the day, when people spoke of Jewish critics as
"_________" and "__________" and "_________________." Right? So
shouldn't sweet Norman understand this and humbly apologize, even at
age 82, and say: "sorry for using ethnic and racial epithets, Michiko,
I was wrong."
Imagine if some critic referred to Mailer as a ''token kike'', or a
''Hymietown two-bit Shylock novelist''? People would be incensed.
We should be incensed over what the old man said about Ms Kakutani,
too. Wrong is wrong.
Come on, Norman, own up!
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