My granddad is probably going to rail on me if he finds out that I ever said this (and he hates me, anyway, long story short; but that's just the kind of person that he is, which is his problem and another long story short. Anyway, I'm crossing my fingers that my granddad doesn't ever find this post.). My granddad was one of three IRS agents who served tax papers to Nixon in light of Nixon's tax scandal and Watergate. Of course, my granddad is a stereotypical, self-hating Jewish Democrat.
His dad was a Jewish-Polish Russian who immigrated to the United States when he was three and settled in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. His mom was a Slovakian-American gentile who was born to Slovakian immigrants in Luzerne County; and they all came from blue-collar, working-class familes. So, he bought into the conventional "wisdom", "Okay; I'm supposed to be a Democrat." However, he sure didn't rally for the working-class or Jewish Democrats (or especially Republicans of any sort). Of course, he still won't admit our Jewish heritage; and clammed up about his role in Watergate until I found out what it was via an e-mail that I received that hinted at it. I confronted him on both of those things, among other things.
I think that (and this is why I use my granddad as an example of Polish and Polish-American people in United States politics) with people like my granddad (who seems to, in one way or another, exemplify self-hating Jews and the bad side of the IRS), there'll be Polish and Polish-American people (especially Ashkenazic Jewish-American) people who'll step back and go:
- These are the kinds of people representing the "good, ol' Polacks"? Oy vey iz meir: I can see why "Polack" jokes and jokes about politicians continue to get spread around.
- Thanks, but we already have people like John Kerry and George Soros [John Kerry being a Jewish-Austrian American, and Gyorgy "George Soros" Schwartz being a self-hating Jewish Hungarian (See the Jewish World Review article on George Soros.)] representing us; and we don't want to be lumped in with anti-Israel, anti-republican, anti-Christian people.
- So, we're expected to vote for people who don't mind haranguing Nixon and Bush, whether or not they actually made mistakes and did stupid things; but we give deliberately-lawless, socialist, and hypocritical people like Barack Obama a pass? Is that the good, Polish Catholic thing to do? Is that the good Jewish thing to do?
- So, Hank Paulson and the rest of the Bush Department of the Treasury and Federal Reserve spent money "like a bunch of drunken sailors". Great [saracastically]: here go the questions. " 'Drunken'? That reminds me of those ____ Polacks who drink all the time- not to mention the rest of the Slavs, and especially those Jews who came over here." "'Jews'? You mean the ones with all the money, anyway? It's no wonder that even the Poles came up with the term 'k___'."
There are still a number of people who hate Polish, Jewish, and Jewish-Polish people and/or their descendants; and when you have Polish and Jewish people who represent or worsen the stereotypes about themselves, even the stereotypical WASP politician will get a pass compared to what the Polish and Jewish communities will get should they try to run even a candidate who would challenge the "Polack" and other stereotypes.
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