History will record

I haven't ever seen them, but I understand that Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee made some fairly scandalous tapes a few years back that were all the rage. I'm not claiming any moral high ground here, I just never had the opportunity or the inclination to risk a virus on my PC back then. Still, I know enough about them to know that it's not necessarily the clothes that make the man.

Decades earlier, Dick Nixon made his own revealing tapes, and they've turned out to be the gift that keeps on giving, not simply in revelation of Nixon himself, but often in the way they have disrobed the other participants on those tapes, the way that the tapes have stripped their characters bare, to reveal their moles and piercings and just how far to the right they swing; things that, quite frankly, we'd just rather have never seen the light of day.

A couple of days ago, Jeffrey Goldberg highlighted this vile exchange between Henry Kissinger and Tricky Dick that was just released by the Nixon Library in the latest dribbling of disgusting Nixon-tape-isms:

"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy," Mr. Kissinger said. "And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."

"I know," Nixon responded. "We can't blow up the world because of it."

Of course, as we all know by now, it's the liberals who are the real anti-Semites. Fortunately for us, and just to make that point (once again via Goldberg), Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League have chimed in to put this all in perspective:

ADL: KISSINGER REMARKS ON NIXON TAPES REVEAL "DISTURBING FLAWS,"
BUT DO NOT CHANGE HIS LEGACY

New York, NY, December 13, 2010 ... The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said a 1973 discussion between President Richard M. Nixon and his top foreign policy advisor at the time, Henry Kissinger, released as part of the Nixon Tapes, "shows a disturbing and even callous insensitivity" toward Soviet Jews, "but should not change history's verdict on the important contributions and ultimate legacy" of Kissinger.

Abe Foxman continues on: "Dr. Kissinger's contributions to the safety and security of the U.S. and Israel have solidly established his legacy as a champion of democracy and as a committed advocate for preserving the well-being of the Jewish state of Israel. The Nixon Tapes should not change history's verdict on the important contributions and ultimate legacy of Henry Kissinger."

I don't have much good to say about Henry Kissinger or his legacy - regarding Israel or for that matter the rest of the world - but that's not what I want to discuss here.

What I do want to comment on, ever so briefly, is Abe Foxman. Goldberg expresses his sadness in Foxman's reaction to Kissinger's vile comments, going on to state "He is a better man than his reaction suggests."

Well, if Jeffrey says so, but I'd have an easier time taking Goldberg at his word if he had said Foxman was a better man. Past tense. Because Foxman's words and behavior of late certainly do not convince me of the quality of his character.

I guess after expressing his views on the "Ground Zero Mosque," one could, to a certain degree, forgive Foxman on the grounds of post-9/11 misguided oversensitivity, or something. But excusing implicit acquiescence to a Soviet holocaust of Jews? You'd think that went just a bit too far. Apparently, you'd be wrong.

UPDATE: Well, that changes everything I said. Goldberg now reports that Marty Peretz ("Muslim life is cheap") is on the side of Foxman and Kissinger.