Roger Simon is less diplomatic about it:
10/14/2003: RACIST GARBAGE IN THE NEW REPUBLIC
Thanks (but no thanks) to Meryl Yourish and Instapundit for pointing out the astonishing and hugely depressing example of anti-Semitism by Gregg Easterbrook in The New Republic (of all places). Mr. Easterbrook holds two Jewish movie executives, Michael Eisner of Disney and Harvey Weinstein of Miramax, responsible for the violent oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino, singling them out as Jews and making reference to the Holocaust in the defense of his argument.
With all due respect (and that ain't much in this case), I would like to inform Mr. Easterbrook that he doesn't know shit from Shinola about the way movies are made or why. I will leave aside at the outset whether Eisner would have made the movie Kill Bill (doubt it and, unlike Easterbrook, I have actually made movies with Eisner, so have some first hand knowledge) or whether Tarantino's film is any good (frankly I don't like his movies that much, although Pulp Fiction has some terrific acting and a superb use of music). But clearly much of the world thinks a lot of Tarantino's work. He has won Academy Awards, the Cannes Palme d'Or, British BAFTA Awards and Japanese Film Awards, among others. His films are not just commercial successes, although they are clearly that.
Now here's the important part. If the Jew Harvey Weinstein... or any other film executive of any race... were to have turned down Tarantino's next film, the chances are they would have been either ridiculed or fired. He or she also would have been accused of censoring a supposedly great artist. And this is not, Earth-to-Easterbrook, restricted to venal Hollywood. It's the same in the entire film world from Bollywood to Cine Citta. And guess what--some of those exploiters of violence are not Jewish.
So what does that make you?
As the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of a movie about the Holocaust, Mr. Easterbrook, I think I have earned the right to say this: You're an asshole.
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