I regularly receive email newsletters from Jewcy.com.  I assume that most people who read this site know what Jewcy is.  But in case there are one or two who don’t Jewcy is “an entertainment and media company devoted to helping Jews (and anyone else) find, use, share, and expand meaning and community.”  At least according to their site. I found them because they sold funny t-shirts. They do indeed sell merchandise, but they also have a newsletter that publishes various human interest articles and opinion pieces.  Lately I’ve noticed that in what appears to be an attempt to be inclusive in opinions, they have featured some rather startling opinion pieces.  One was entitled “Are Christians More Tolerant than Jews?” and another was “Is God a Republican.” Now I’m all for hearing both sides of the story, but these two articles were such drivel that they didn’t dignify the concept of equal time for opposing opinions, they abused it.In the piece about Christian tolerance, (here is the link http://www.jewcy.com/first_person/03-09/christianity_scorn) the author simply posits her own experiences as what can at best be called a liberal-raised, assimilated, mildly self-hating Jew.  She takes the premise of the chosen people and turns it into an elitist concept instead of the true definition that we are chosen to lead by example, not that we are intrinsically better.  She also intuits that since her Judaism consists primarily of liking matzo ball soup on occasion, there really is no difference between Jews and Christians.  She married outside her faith and has witnessed her husband’s observant Catholic family.  She therefore concludes that Christians really act on their core beliefs while Jews just eat bagels and lox and read the Times. Wow, her logic is just unassailable, isn’t it?In the Republican God article (link is here http://www.jewcy.com/feature/2007-03-21/god_is_a_conservative) the logic is so reductive it is almost infantile.  I won’t even address the points, they are so puerile. The question here is why did these articles even get included?  What statement is Jewcy trying to make about who it wants it’s readership to be?  If they want both liberal and conservative viewpoints, fine.  But get people who can make cogent arguments that are not just the equivalent of ingesting a conservative talking points emetic.

Clearly from the comments, the readership on the whole is not buying what these writers are selling.  I hope that Jewcy either discontinues its lame attempts to create a dialogue between the left and the right, or endeavors to get some right-leaning contributors who are neither conservative mouthpieces nor sheltered pseudo-intellectuals.  Challenge my beliefs, just don’t insult my intelligence.