Meet one poor schmuck: Lowell, Massachusetts school board member Robert Hoey, Jr., who made the mistake of saying “kike” on public television when referring to a Jew. (I could call it the “k-word,” but I’m not going to do it, and I’m using it didactically instead of as a slur—a slur used by Hoey). Plus many readers may not know that the k-word is actually “kike”, and is as bad a slur towards Jews as the “n-word” is towards blacks.
Well, here’s Hoey screwing up when he was on public television:
Lowell School Committee member #BobHoey making his negative feelings about #Israel known in no uncertain terms pic.twitter.com/P0chruRpQh
— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) February 26, 2021
The Jewish Journal gives more; I haven’t checked the “MSM” (mainstream media), but I doubt you’ll find a lot about it there.
LOWELL – School Committee member Robert Hoey Jr., who referred to a former administrator at the Lowell Public Schools as a “kike” on live cable access TV on Wednesday, announced his resignation on Friday in a video posted on Facebook.
Hoey, who hosts the morning show “City Life” on Lowell Telecommunications Corporation cable access Channel 8, made the statement on the live program at around 6:35 a.m. while discussing school personnel. “We lost the kike, I mean the Jewish guy. I hate to say it but that’s what people used to say behind his back – Gary Frisch … He was the guy in charge of our budget,” said Hoey.
. . .In his resignation video, Hoey spoke for seven minutes before announcing his decision to quit. “As of today, I’m resigning from the Lowell School Committee,” he said. Earlier in the video, he apologized to Frisch and the community. “I’m so sorry to that individual that was hurt by this, and I’m sorry to every individual across the country,” said Hoey.
But the really funny thing, putting aside his anti-Semitism—which I don’t believe for a second he’s given up—is Hoey’s “apology and resignation” video, a 7½-minute brain dump that IsraellyCool, another Jewish site, characterizes as “the world’s worst apology.” Indeed it is; I haven’t seen a worse one.
I’ll put the video below, and IsraellyCool has some sardonic comments, including noting that Hoey mistakes the “k-word” for the “n-word” and has to be corrected by his daughter at the very beginning of his “apology”.
Hoey starts by apologizing for using the “N” word, not the “K” word. You can then hear his daughter whispering “Not the ‘N’ word.” It only goes downhill from there.
“Highlights” include:
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Promising it will be short and sweet (it is 7.30 minutes of rambling drivel)
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Playing the victim, emphasizing how hard this has been on him
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Apologizing to the nameless individual hurt by this. And then himself!
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“All (my father) basically did was gamble and make babies”
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“I have a big mouth…I have no control over how I talk to speak…I am going to tell ya how it is, how I feel” followed by “I will never saw those words again after this!”
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“Do you know how many nephews and nieces I have who are people of color?”
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His daughter having to remind him to apologize to teachers and students
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Apologizing to School Committee members Mike Dillon and Hilary Clark, and then saying he is not sorry to the other 4 committee members
But that’s no substitute for listening to what comes out of the ass’s mouth. The guy should have just apologized briefly in writing, resigned (if you think that was a resign-able offense), and moved on. Instead, he unloads his entire life on the hapless viewer:
S words? H words?
I think what bugs me most is first, his Army sweatshirt. You’re not making yourself look good, you’re making the Army look bad.
I’m also somewhat irritated by his bringing his age into it. 66 is not that old. One of my grandfathers would occasionally let loose with a racial swear, but he was born in the ’20s, not the ’50s.
“you’re making the Army look bad” : Thus disclosing a state secret.
“66 is not that old” : Ask a teenager.
“66 is not that old” : Ask a teenager.’
With not a few teens one doesn’t have to ask – they’ll go out of their way to point out one’s age, so high-quality has been their raising.
Have at the ready the reply, “You do hope to live to at least my age – and understand that not everyone does – don’t you?”
My reply:
Let’s have a ski race. I’ll clean your clock, mate.
Then you can buy the booze, I’ll drink you under the table.
Practice makes perfect, and helps the drying behind your ears.
I don’t think a teenager’s ageism excuse yours. That is presumably another *individual* you are referring to.
Sure, teens may think 66 is old, but I was talking in the context of cultural changes in the US. This guy was not even a teen when the civil rights movement started. His formative years were Woodstock-era, not reconstruction-era. He doesn’t have much ‘when I grew up this was acceptable’ cred.
Oy.
Some old coot says the k-word. Other than the faux indignation from everyone, how much actual harm did everyone suffer? The guy tried to apologize in his own way; give him a break. We go on about the woke all the time but from my perspective this is similar to how they might react.
The proper response was him removing himself from the school board. My personal view of what was ‘required’ of him ends there. Discussing the badness of his apology is, IMO, more like gallows humor than anything else – I’m not incensed or upset, more like incredulous.
Yup…
I don’t see it as a question of harm, but rather, one of accountability from a public official. There are standards of acceptable behavior that must be upheld, and with Hoey’s obvious bigotry and anti-Semitism, he is unfit to continue serving as a community leader. This is something Trump and his enablers refuse to understand, and we are a greatly diminished society as a result of no accountability.
I got convinced by the Anti-Defamation League that antisemitism, or any other kind of undue discrimination of the kind (against the blacks, the gays, the stamp collectors or whatever) begins with these small things that have to be fought so that the bigger thing never have to be fought.
Except in the case of Ken Kukec’s wife, an explanation would have been enough.
I’m 70. The “Some old coot” defense doesn’t work for me.
My wife, who grew up among the Boston Irish in Cambridge, once called a kid a “kike.” She was about eight years old at the time and understood it strictly as some general-purpose insult she’d heard older kids in the neighborhood use. Turns out, the kid she said it to was Jewish. His parents called her parents and that night she had to march over to his house, climb the stoop, ring the doorbell, and apologize to the whole family.
It was a source of great humiliation for her, unto adulthood. As a matter of fact, I don’t think she (who hasn’t an anti-Semitic bone in her body) could even bring herself to tell me about it until we’d been married a couple years.
Anyway, I stored it away and, vicious counterpuncher that I am, sometimes when we’d get into a real knock-down, drag-out row, and she’d start harping on something I’d done that seemed like ancient history, I’d turn to her and say, “Yeah, well, at least I’m not some anti-Semite who once called a poor, little innocent Jewish kid a ‘kike.'”
Oh, boy howdy, we’d really be off to the races then. 🙂
Good thing the other kid wasn’t Obama, or she’d have gotten slugged.
Yeah, or the tough Jew played by Montgomery Clift in the Young Lions, or the one played by Joe Mantegna in Liberty Heights — both of whom took on all comers who hurled anti-Semitic slurs their way.
For that matter, if memory serves, our host once had to defend himself in a fistfight with a pair of anti-Semites.
Cringe-worthy. Also played the veteran card with his Army t-shirt and 4th Infantry cap.
“He was the guy in charge of our budget” Yep : the Jewish guy was the money guy.
His real attitude won’t just change for the better. It will only be driven under ground.
The real shame is how quick humans are to go for the things that likely have nothing to do with the issue at hand when one has a difference of opinion. People of all races, political affiliations and religions are a bell curve and the disagreement that they initially had could most likely have been attributed to anyone of them. It is just that when they are “other” than ourselves, we are too quick to pull that card out. It is good that he is off the school board, just sad how prevalent it is.
Like many of such people, he apologised that other people were hurt by his statement, not for making that statement.
I was taught that if you made a point of never using such slurs even in private conversation, you have very little risk of inadvertently saying them out loud in public.
The converse implication is that people who “accidentally” let such slurs slip are pretty likely to use them frequently when they think it is safe to do so.