Those were the words of WRKO radio talk show host Jeff Kuhner, who bills himself as “Liberalism’s Worst Nightmare,” speaking in front of Newton’s Ed Center last night, according to this report from the TAB’s Julie Cohen.
Cohen’s story doesn’t say if Kuhner is a Newton resident and she didn’t interview or quote any other protestors and is short on details. If you were there, please share what you saw.
This appears to be the disingenuous “protest” by the Anti-Muslim group with the inaccurate name (something to do with “Peace & Tolerance?”) , the promotion of which Chuck Tanowitz wrote about last week:
https://village14.com/2018/02/05/how-do-you-sugarcoat-hate-speech-with-actual-sugar/.
I hope the donuts were good.
It’s time for Andy Levin at the Newton TAB to go. The naked promotion of Charles Jacobs and his group of stealth haters in the TAB’s news pages has been unconscionable and an abject failure of community journalism. The TAB’s stories on this read like press releases from CAMERA and at least one of them has had Andy’s byline on it. The last straw was today, when there were 5, count ’em, 5 TAB FB posts on Charles’ latest little agitation, and zero posts about Sunday’s caucuses – where hundreds of Newton residents showed up to help determine our next governor.
Care to comment Andy? I worked in journalism long enough to know what a community journalist is, and I think the people and readers of Newton deserve one instead of you.
Be careful what you wish for Ralph. I don’t always agree with Andy but he still cares,advocates and pays attention to Newton in ways any successor likely wouldn’t.
That said, this article has major problems and given the severity of the charges waged by the protesters it does a major disservice to our city.
The reporter gives us no context for how big this event was. She doesn’t say whether any protesters spoke other than Jeff Kuhner. She doesn’t tell us if Kuhner is a Newton resident or provide any background into his own easily discoverable extremist history. She doesn’t say if any of the protesters are Newton residents or are parents of Newton Public School kids. She doesn’t tell us if the event attracted counter-protesters.
And given the severity of accusations directed at Superintendent David Fleishman and School Committee Chair Ruth Goldman, why weren’t they interviewed? The reporter either failed to ask them or they declined, which if that’s the case, should also be reported. Why should the residents of Newton hear from a “spokesman” about this, rather than directly from our local officials?
As editor, Andy Levin bares responsibility for this lazy, careless and irresponsible “article.” I urge Andy to demand more of his reporters, as we’ve seen him do in the past. But I still think he’s our best hope for stewardship at the helm of this critical resource-starved publication.
More like Rationality’s Worst Nightmare, but that could be said of activist Newtonians on both sides of the aisle.
Right on Ralph Ranalli, couldn’t agree with you more!
Ralph, your comment on the TAB’s Facebook page disappeared. Your doing or the TAB’s?
That must have been the TAB’s doing, Mary.
Read this bit of pro-CAMERA fluff from a couple of months ago under Andy’s byline, Greg and tell me whether you still think he’s our “best hope.”
http://newton.wickedlocal.com/news/20171121/camera-focuses-on-newton-schools-arab-israeli-conflict-curriculum
Frankly, its not that hard to get a decent editor. I know tons of them who are either underemployed or working in other industries now and any one of them would be better than Andy Levin. Not helping dishonest, agenda-driven hate groups poison the discourse in the community you’re supposed to be serving is a pretty low bar, and Andy can’t even meet that. He needs to go.
I’d be curious to hear from Andy why he felt the CAMERA book was worthy of a Q&A. If you look at the Amazon reviews, the first (5 stars) comes from Jacobs.
Also, if you go back a year to this interview I posted on this site: https://village14.com/2016/12/07/is-it-sinister-evil-or-vile-or-just-another-contest/, Joshua Resnek placed an ad in the TAB to solicit high schoolers to submit their educational materials. When I asked Resnek why he was collecting this information, his answer was that it was for a “fella doing a long report on education standards and how things like this are done. It’s footnoted, it’s pretty well done. It’s coming out in several months, the missing piece is Newton North High School…. He’d rather not be publicly revealed until the study comes out. It’s a well-known educator who has done multiple studies. It’s not Mr. Jacobs or one of his associates.”
I suspect he was collecting that information for Steven Stotsky, who wrote the book for CAMERA. Stotsky is a trained mechanical engineer who went to work as a researcher for CAMERA a bit more than a decade ago. His work includes a highly suspect report that correlates data about donations to Palestinian causes with increases in attacks on Israel. The research rarely gets mainstream attention and when it does, it’s often to point out how flawed it is.
This feels like an attempt by a small group to normalize hate by making it appear as if it’s supported by a larger part of the population. The “protest” the other night included a food truck and a lot of pomp. We don’t know who, exactly, was in that crowd, but I suspect that few were from Newton and even fewer with kids in the school system. There is a reason that the main speaker was a talk show host who doesn’t live here.
So it comes back to the question: why does the city’s paper of record believe that this is a story worth covering without more context?
The Tab with Andy as editor has included more positive spin on conspiracies with radical content such as the above – small groups with small ideas are given an over abundant space in the paper.
This article should be his last as editor. Even on the Tab Facebook page, readers have asked questions about the lack of actual, factual coverage of the topic (or what the topic being covered is) and continue to receive vague replies defending the article. It has caused alarm among NPS parents because it only addresses the groups complaints about the “Middle East curriculum” and calls for firing Superintendent Fleishman without any indication of why. It also only calls Kuhner a talk show host without any foundation for why he would be leading this protest.
Lousy reporting, lousy article, lousy editor.
It’s pretty clear that the case against biased curriculum in Newton schools can’t get a fair hearing from Chuck, Ralph and Marti and Co. They would rather not discuss the issues themselves: it’s easier to defame people. Also, they’d lose any fair debate. Let’s pretend they’d actually accept my offer to a public debate/discussion — what could they possibly say about these cases:
1. The students were given a purposely bogus version of the Hamas Charter which erased the call for the murder of every Jew on the planet, and the teachers’ note says this lesson’s main point is to show that the conflict is only about land (and not, presumably, about a religious conflict (much harder to resolve?
2. The students were given phone PLO maps and not told they were produced by the PLO. In fact the original PLO signature was erased!
3. Newton teachers were given a Saudi-funded manual that had blood libels against Jews; they were told that Jews in Israel murder Arab women in jail. (This was removed after that bigot, Jacobs (me!) and my colleagues were persistent enough to embarrass even David Fleishman.
So if these critics would agree to debate the facts with me in public instead of throwing stones on line, they would be in a pickle. What would they say? What do you say, Marti, Chuck and Ralph. Please don’t chicken out.
Charles Jacobs
Two other points:
1. There were way over 250 people at the rally.
2. David Fleishman is reported to have promised leaders in the Jewish community that all materials on the Arab-Israel conflict in the 10th grade world history classes have been withdrawn. This was done in secret, presumably so that he would not have to admit that the bigot, Charles Jacobs (me!) was right. I have the letter that was sent to Fleishman by Jewish leaders acknowledging his promise and I read the key paragraph when I spoke at the rally. You can see this in the Tab’s online coverage, I think.
Charles Jacobs
Same old rehash of the same talking points in a continued attempt to leverage issues to control and politicize curriculum.
Notice how Tricia purposefully neglects to address the issues themselves, but calls them “talking points” instead. If she actually had evidence that what I said was incorrect, surely she would have mentioned it. But she just calls names. Such is the M.O. of propagandists.
“calls names”? The one sentence I wrote is right there, directly contradicting your attempt to misdirect. But I realize that by replying to you I am just feeding your insatiable need for attention and self-aggrandization, so I’m out.
In all the criticism, I find much name-calling and accusation. However, I find no specifics in what was said or done at the rally to justify the charges. The answers to your questions about the protesters’ rationale were in the speeches given at the rally if any cared enough about their city to attend it. A student’s parent did speak. Those of us from out of town attended from concern for our own towns as well as concern for Newton. What has happened in Newton is happening across this country. This is not Newton’s issue alone. It is a national issue.
Incidentally, the demeanor of the 300+ crowd and the speakers was exemplory.
See? Can’t come up with ONE fact, not one.
Bye, bye
Americans for Peace and Tolerance doesn’t appear to really be for either.
This group has been beating this drum on this issue for the last five years. During that time the Newton School Dept, the Commonweath of Mass, and the Anti-Defamation League have all investigated the charges and found them baseless.
Now they’ve recruited WRKO’s Jeff Kuhner, self described “liberalism’s worst nightmare” to see if they can rile people up on this same issue since all of the investigations have all long since played out with none of them backing up the APT’s claims.
Looks like facts to me. Seems like a good place this thread. Comments are closed.