A Comment on MJ Rosenberg

I left this comment at JJ Goldberg's defense of MJ Rosenberg:-

Since JJ & I are also friends, and from that era of the mid- to late-60s, can I ask: when does "scorchingly critical" phase into intemperate, irrational, nonsensical and then nasty, bitter and hateful semantics? Can one separate semantics from one's frame of mind, from one's ideology? Does language reflect or is it a tool, thoughtfully and tactically (and usually tactlessly) employed even with malice aforethought? What is MJ really thinking when he writes what he writes and how he writes it? Forget (no, don't, but still, for argument's sake) his "Israel firster". For the last few years, "strain" or not, he has left the rails (as we say he Hebrew - yarad min hapasim). Do we forgive him? Because he's Jewish and one of us? because he's a friend? because he's of the Left? Or do we say that it is his Leftism thsat demands we treat him differently? His playing on the field of anti-zionism and anti-semitism is unworthy - of his past, of our future.

^