The 'Jewish Satan Claus' and the Hogfather
The 'Jewish Satan Claus' and the Hogfather
by Hobb Mon 25 Jan 2021 - 14:51
Watching the medieval-like train of beggars that follow celebrities like Elon Musk on twitter begging for bit-coins triggered an old deep memory. There used to be a column in the Sudbury Star where some millionaire who give cash to people who wrote in sob stories and my grandmother would encourage me to write in. I never did, I was frightened of contacting such a dubious character and ashamed to be asked to beg. I based the early era of my life on doing the opposite of whatever my grandmother said and this was no exception. Who was the syndicated patron that tempted grandmothers to pimp their grandchildren?
There is not too much information of what I through would be a simple search and this is purposefully, the millionaire grew instructions to his secretary to have his memory die with him (or at least she claims this), a very strange ending to a operation designed primarily to forging the millionaire's public reputation. Its the type of ending you except more with an intelligence operation....
The millionaire turned out to be Percy Ross, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who made his millions in furs, auctioneer and plastic garbage bags, then became addicted to the publicity of philanthropy in the late 70s. After stunts like offering $50,000 to help 50 Vietnam refugees come to the United States and $50 million to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini in exchange for the U.S. hostages (he paid neither), he got began writing his 'Thanks a Million' column in 800 US newspapers and across Canada through syndication (Creators Syndicate). This is how I encountered him in the Sudbury Star during the 1980s.
Ross hired a PR firm to help him create the column, his goal was to become know as "the Blue-Collar Millionaire", "America’s Rich Uncle", "Ann Landers with a bank account,” and "the Jewish Santa Claus". Ross would set all the calendars at his office to Dec 25th so that everyday was Christmas.
The dubious nature of Ross that my childhood self had detected was not mistaken. Biographers admit his 'self-made millionaire' story are fabricated, his early life is was has loans from the Jewish mob and playing craps in Las Vegas, he was a Democratic supporter who also ran the 'Democrats for Nixon' campaign that was a breeding ground for neo-conservatism, he was embroiled in civil suit over withholding profits, passing bad checks and wrongful dismissal; and most damningly, no one could every confirm if he actually gave away all the money he promised. At the height of his columns popularity in the 80s, Ross was a media pariah in his home state of Minnesota due to investigations into his undisclosed fiances, playboy-bunny secretaries, drug habits and lawsuits with his sons.
With financial ties to organize crime, political ties to Neo-consertvaism and a 20-year media operation that is purposefully 'memory-holed' at it's completion on his instructions, I can be forgiven for being suspicious - but sort of political analysis is not what I'm writing this. Whether Ross was really a strange variant of 1970s 'let's make a deal' economic populism or something more sinister is not the topic. I'm interested what he wrote in his column.
Part of the 'Thank's a Millionire' format was that the supplicant's letters were printed with Ross's response. Ross was a 'storyteller' and the price of his generosity was to tell him a sob story - that he approved of. If the story had the right mix of 'down on their luck' and 'pluckiness', Ross reply to these request with his "homespun wisdom" and the claim he fulfilled their financial request. Often these were for poverty-level healthcare needs but he also "sent money to an older woman to live out her modest dream of playing the slots and eating a pastrami sandwich in Atlantic City, and he helped a woman keep her 92-year-old grandfather in girlie magazines for the rest of his life."
But there were some requests he printed only to refuse them...
And there is this example I found from the Winnipeg Free Press in 1990...
There is not too much information of what I through would be a simple search and this is purposefully, the millionaire grew instructions to his secretary to have his memory die with him (or at least she claims this), a very strange ending to a operation designed primarily to forging the millionaire's public reputation. Its the type of ending you except more with an intelligence operation....
https://longreads.com/2017/07/20/percy-ross-wants-to-give-you-money/ wrote:Miss Webber (as Ross called her, in print and in person) told me one more story. Several months before his “sudden and unexpected” death in 2001 at the age of 84, she and Ross “held a conversation about his legacy,” she said. “He asked that after his own death, if I could safeguard the family’s privacy and let the story of Thanks a Million simply fade into obscurity. I told him then, as I’m telling you now, that I would honor that request for privacy.”
The millionaire turned out to be Percy Ross, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who made his millions in furs, auctioneer and plastic garbage bags, then became addicted to the publicity of philanthropy in the late 70s. After stunts like offering $50,000 to help 50 Vietnam refugees come to the United States and $50 million to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini in exchange for the U.S. hostages (he paid neither), he got began writing his 'Thanks a Million' column in 800 US newspapers and across Canada through syndication (Creators Syndicate). This is how I encountered him in the Sudbury Star during the 1980s.
Ross hired a PR firm to help him create the column, his goal was to become know as "the Blue-Collar Millionaire", "America’s Rich Uncle", "Ann Landers with a bank account,” and "the Jewish Santa Claus". Ross would set all the calendars at his office to Dec 25th so that everyday was Christmas.
The dubious nature of Ross that my childhood self had detected was not mistaken. Biographers admit his 'self-made millionaire' story are fabricated, his early life is was has loans from the Jewish mob and playing craps in Las Vegas, he was a Democratic supporter who also ran the 'Democrats for Nixon' campaign that was a breeding ground for neo-conservatism, he was embroiled in civil suit over withholding profits, passing bad checks and wrongful dismissal; and most damningly, no one could every confirm if he actually gave away all the money he promised. At the height of his columns popularity in the 80s, Ross was a media pariah in his home state of Minnesota due to investigations into his undisclosed fiances, playboy-bunny secretaries, drug habits and lawsuits with his sons.
With financial ties to organize crime, political ties to Neo-consertvaism and a 20-year media operation that is purposefully 'memory-holed' at it's completion on his instructions, I can be forgiven for being suspicious - but sort of political analysis is not what I'm writing this. Whether Ross was really a strange variant of 1970s 'let's make a deal' economic populism or something more sinister is not the topic. I'm interested what he wrote in his column.
Part of the 'Thank's a Millionire' format was that the supplicant's letters were printed with Ross's response. Ross was a 'storyteller' and the price of his generosity was to tell him a sob story - that he approved of. If the story had the right mix of 'down on their luck' and 'pluckiness', Ross reply to these request with his "homespun wisdom" and the claim he fulfilled their financial request. Often these were for poverty-level healthcare needs but he also "sent money to an older woman to live out her modest dream of playing the slots and eating a pastrami sandwich in Atlantic City, and he helped a woman keep her 92-year-old grandfather in girlie magazines for the rest of his life."
But there were some requests he printed only to refuse them...
https://greensboro.com/millionaires-generous-gifts-come-to-an-end-percy-ross-editor-says-hes-given-away-between/ wrote:[Ross] had no qualms about rejecting other requests, even with a tone of disdain. One woman in prison asked Ross for money so she could buy her son a computer. Ross said no.
``I tried to believe that there are white people who care,' she wrote back, ``only to find the truth staring me in the face.'
``Talk about being disappointed!' Ross shot back. ``Anyone who can promise a child you'll get him a new computer through this rich, white, old guy you can write to while you sit in prison is deluded beyond compare.'
And there is this example I found from the Winnipeg Free Press in 1990...
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Re: The 'Jewish Satan Claus' and the Hogfather
by Hobb Mon 25 Jan 2021 - 15:36
Mr. P.J: My problem is I was born black. I'm getting sick and tired of kissing up to white people and working for low wages ... I don't believe in Santa Claus, much less a big, white, fat-cat millionaire who give out money to people in need.
Ross Percy: IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE, YOU DON'T RECEIVE ...The truth is you turn me off ... what happened to black pride? You don't have to explain what oppression to me, I grew up Jewish is a predominately Protestant community.
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Re: The 'Jewish Satan Claus' and the Hogfather
by Hobb Mon 25 Jan 2021 - 16:05
The two rejections I have for Ross are him rejecting Black supplicants and in both cases the supplicants refer to Ross as 'white'. I will leave this question for those better verse in race-relations but it cannot be accidental that one of the founding texts of neo-conservatism is Norman Podhoretz's essay 'My Negro Problem—And Ours' where he rants that
The question of Percy Ross and Neo-conservatism is interesting but I'm more interested in how massive inequality is used to demand belief - Ross wants you to swallow your pride and offer your belief - in him as the Jewish Santa Claus.
Norman Podhoretz's essay 'My Negro Problem—And Ours' (Commentary Magazine 1963) wrote:The hatred I still feel for Negroes is the hardest of all the old feelings to face or admit, and it is the most hidden and the most overlarded by the conscious attitudes into which I have succeeded in willing myself. It no longer has, as for me it once did, any cause or justification (except, perhaps, that I am constantly being denied my right to an honest expression of the things I earned the right as a child to feel). How, then, do I know that this hatred has never entirely disappeared? I know it from the insane rage that can stir in me at the thought of Negro anti-Semitism; I know it from the disgusting prurience that can stir in me at the sight of a mixed couple; and I know it from the violence that can stir in me whenever I encounter that special brand of paranoid touchiness to which many Negroes are prone.
This, then, is where I am; it is not exactly where I think all other white liberals are, but it cannot be so very far away either. And it is because I am convinced that we white Americans are—for whatever reason, it no longer matters—so twisted and sick in our feelings about Negroes that I despair of the present push toward integration.
The question of Percy Ross and Neo-conservatism is interesting but I'm more interested in how massive inequality is used to demand belief - Ross wants you to swallow your pride and offer your belief - in him as the Jewish Santa Claus.
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Re: The 'Jewish Satan Claus' and the Hogfather
by Hobb Mon 25 Jan 2021 - 17:06
Which brings us to Canada's infamous Fraser Institute that is devoted to the austerity 'Austrian economics' of Fred Hayek and host Hayek-fangirl blogs like Sarah Skwire who excretes '''hip''' propaganda classics like:
....and the article I want to discuss 'Christmas traditions and Hayek’s wisdom' where she hijacks Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather to fit her Austrian agenda.
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....and the article I want to discuss 'Christmas traditions and Hayek’s wisdom' where she hijacks Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather to fit her Austrian agenda.
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Re: The 'Jewish Satan Claus' and the Hogfather
by Hobb Mon 25 Jan 2021 - 17:52
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/blogs/christmas-traditions-and-hayek-s-wisdom wrote:Christmas traditions and Hayek’s wisdom
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM?
"…The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"
NO
"Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
"Really? Then what would have happened, pray?"
A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.
I’ve always liked this exchange because, for me, it emphasizes the way traditions imbue the world with meaning long after the original reasons for them have withered away. [...] Hayek reminds us that “the appropriateness of our conduct is not necessarily dependent on our knowing why it is so.”
Hayek continues, a little later in the same piece, by noting that his respect for following traditions even when we don’t understand them is intended to serve as something of a precaution against the modern tendency to think we do understand, and can control, everything.
What we must learn to understand is that human civilization has a life of its own, that all our efforts to improve things must operate within a working whole which we cannot control entirely, and with regard to which we can hope merely to facilitate and assist the operation of its forces so far as we understand them.
So light something up this winter. Maybe it will bring the sun back.
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Re: The 'Jewish Satan Claus' and the Hogfather
by Hobb Thu 28 Jan 2021 - 14:41
Hogfather is about how the "Auditors of Reality" want Santa Claus Hogfather killed off because he fosters belief and belief fosters a whole bunch of messy ideas like beauty and justice. The Auditors are archetypes of "materialism" or properly "reductive materialism" - it's not the "sun" its a "a mere ball of flaming gas".
So there is brain-seizing does irony in Skwire's invoking this story when her blog titles include Early Valentine’s Day poem includes the economic principles of exit and voice and The nature of money—and Thanksgiving—depends on tradition and tacit agreement where she reduces holidays into libertarian economic principles.
Her reduction of Christmas to just "tradition" in itself, is so abstract and bizarre it is hard to analyze, but I beleive she is trying to align Hayek's quote as opposing the "Auditors of Reality" and others who want do not want "human civilization [to] has a life of its own...which we cannot control entirely". Since Auditors are called "celestial bureaucrats" and in the libertarian mindset only government have 'bureaucrats' the connection is obvious. And since capitalism is now 'traditional' in our Western culture, why not just keep following 'tradition' and resist all those "celestial bureaucrats" killjoys.
This co-option of Prachett by Libertarian is a trend. See "https://reason.com/2015/03/12/howterry-pratchett-made-me-a-libertarian/" or "https://izgad.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-secret-of-ankh-morpork-non-comic.html" from another example and it is easy to guess why this happens Pratchett is cynical humanist who often puts government bureaucracies under his satirical lens - but only a propagandist would imagine that the sliminess of the business world escaped his lens or fail to appreciate public service, but the libertarians manage to do just that
The Pratchett wiki describes 'Going Postal' as "how the absolute freedom of capitalists to make money might infringe the quality of life and/or civil liberties of those lower down the line" The protagionist of 'Going Postal' Pratchett is Moist von Lipwig "a petty thief and con-man who given the choice of facing the gallows or setting Ankh-Morpork's postal system on its feet." Moist had to use his 'skills' to help the public sector or be hanged. In our world Ludwig Von Mises was Friedrich Hayek's professor who taught him all that 'libertarian' Austrian School nonsense.
So Pratchett is a "libertarian" only if you start ignoring a bunch of his work that specifically thumbs-the-nose at them!
If we look to non-libertarian analysis of Prachett we find this attempt to "reconciles the two seeming opposite poles of Pratchett’s political philosophy: his cynical distrust of authority and his fundamental humanism" by J.R.H. Lawless "a Canadian SF author who blends comedy with political themes — drawing heavily, in both cases, on his experience as a lawyer and as Secretary General of a Parliamentary group at the French National Assembly."
Note Lawless attempts to reconcile Prachett's diversity not reduced it to libertarian economic and in doing so he preserves the "rich smorgasbord" of his writings and his "fundamentally humanist message".
I don't know Pratchett's politics well enough to go further than this - but the closest I've seen to real-life "Auditors of Reality" are those libertarians who reduces holidays to economics principles and Pratchett's fantasy literature to even more economics principles.
So there is brain-seizing does irony in Skwire's invoking this story when her blog titles include Early Valentine’s Day poem includes the economic principles of exit and voice and The nature of money—and Thanksgiving—depends on tradition and tacit agreement where she reduces holidays into libertarian economic principles.
Her reduction of Christmas to just "tradition" in itself, is so abstract and bizarre it is hard to analyze, but I beleive she is trying to align Hayek's quote as opposing the "Auditors of Reality" and others who want do not want "human civilization [to] has a life of its own...which we cannot control entirely". Since Auditors are called "celestial bureaucrats" and in the libertarian mindset only government have 'bureaucrats' the connection is obvious. And since capitalism is now 'traditional' in our Western culture, why not just keep following 'tradition' and resist all those "celestial bureaucrats" killjoys.
This co-option of Prachett by Libertarian is a trend. See "https://reason.com/2015/03/12/howterry-pratchett-made-me-a-libertarian/" or "https://izgad.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-secret-of-ankh-morpork-non-comic.html" from another example and it is easy to guess why this happens Pratchett is cynical humanist who often puts government bureaucracies under his satirical lens - but only a propagandist would imagine that the sliminess of the business world escaped his lens or fail to appreciate public service, but the libertarians manage to do just that
izgad.blogspot.com wrote:For a city in which so much is privatized, it is a mystery as to why Ankh-Morpork would need a government-run post-office or mint. (See Going Postal and Making Money.)
The Pratchett wiki describes 'Going Postal' as "how the absolute freedom of capitalists to make money might infringe the quality of life and/or civil liberties of those lower down the line" The protagionist of 'Going Postal' Pratchett is Moist von Lipwig "a petty thief and con-man who given the choice of facing the gallows or setting Ankh-Morpork's postal system on its feet." Moist had to use his 'skills' to help the public sector or be hanged. In our world Ludwig Von Mises was Friedrich Hayek's professor who taught him all that 'libertarian' Austrian School nonsense.
So Pratchett is a "libertarian" only if you start ignoring a bunch of his work that specifically thumbs-the-nose at them!
If we look to non-libertarian analysis of Prachett we find this attempt to "reconciles the two seeming opposite poles of Pratchett’s political philosophy: his cynical distrust of authority and his fundamental humanism" by J.R.H. Lawless "a Canadian SF author who blends comedy with political themes — drawing heavily, in both cases, on his experience as a lawyer and as Secretary General of a Parliamentary group at the French National Assembly."
sss wrote:Or course, nobody said that doing good work and improving the world was ever going to be popular, or even respectable, either for a political system or for any individual government:
“Verence II was the most amiable monarch in the history of Lancre. His subjects regarded him with the sort of good-natured contempt that is the fate of all those who work quietly and conscientiously for the public good.” —Lords and Ladies (1992)
But as Pratchett himself said, you can’t make people happy by law.
The works of Sir Terry Pratchett are a rich smorgasbord of political systems and philosophies, denouncing the faults of our own societies as seen through the dual lenses of satire and good-natured ribbing. While those who deem themselves to be in power are often the best butts of the great Pratchettian joke, Sir Terry’s fundamentally humanist message is as cutting as it is serious, and remarkably prescient—and it is certainly needed today more than at any other time since the Turtle started moving.
Note Lawless attempts to reconcile Prachett's diversity not reduced it to libertarian economic and in doing so he preserves the "rich smorgasbord" of his writings and his "fundamentally humanist message".
I don't know Pratchett's politics well enough to go further than this - but the closest I've seen to real-life "Auditors of Reality" are those libertarians who reduces holidays to economics principles and Pratchett's fantasy literature to even more economics principles.
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