DOV TALES
by Dov Burt Levy

Over the past four years in this column, I have taken a number of journalists and TV personalities to task for statements, positions or programs offensive to the Jewish community. None were Jewish.

Now, in the past six weeks, two well-known Jewish television personalities have crossed my sensitive radar screen and I have some advice for them.

I'll start with Mike Wallace who was not offensive, just not effective.


Mike, how good you were on 60 Minutes, from its beginning in 1968 until this March when you retired at 88 years old to become correspondent emeritus.

You interviewed almost everyone of importance around the world. Your reputation was "as a bruising inquisitor who gave his subjects 'Mike fright.'"

As fellow journalist Bernard Goldberg writes about your 1979 interview with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini: "Mike calmly, gently and most of all politely hit Khomeini with a shot he never saw coming."

"Imam, President Sadat of Egypt says what you are doing is, quote, 'a disgrace to Islam.' And he calls you, Imam — forgive me, his words, not mine — 'a lunatic.'"

Now fast forward to your post-retirement interview last month with Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, the current Iranian prime minister. I was embarrassed at how well he beat you at your game.

Ahmadinejad is the world's most famous Holocaust denier. He is also the chief financial backer of Hezbollah and of the Iraqi insurgents. Plus, he is working hard to become the next finger-on-the-nuclear-button head of state, one who has often proclaimed that Israel should be erased from the earth.

Mike, he squeezed you dry while you fumbled for questions and apologized — for what, I don't know.

Such a 20-minute segment on American network television could not have been bought with mere dollars. It took a Mike Wallace exclusive for a media-savvy Ahmadinejad to come off as reasonable, intelligent, warm and funny, a leader with the ability to fend off any question he did not care to answer.

Now to Jackie Mason: Several weeks ago, Mason, 75, filed suit against the Jews for Jesus organization in New York, claiming damages caused by a proselytizing pamphlet titled, "A Jew for Jesus?" that used Mason's name and likeness.
Mason, at a press conference, and on several television programs, announced he was as Jewish "as a matzo ball or a kosher salami." I agree. Mason, an ordained rabbi, has long made a living as self-styled insult comedian with an unmistakable eastern European accent.

Mason has books and recordings to his credit, and claims the longest performing — over 18 years — one-man Broadway show in history, from New York to London and back.

If you want to sue Jews for Jesus, Jackie, sue. But please don't go on television with an abominable comedic shtick that is so off the wall that it would produce boos from an aging all-Jewish audience in Florida.

What did Mason say that's so infuriating? He said that while he disagreed with Jews for Jesus, he wanted it known that he loved Christians. "After all, without them and Christmas how could Jews make a living? We make money from them." And it got worse after that.

Fifty years ago, Mason's Catskills audience might have laughed at the self-parody of a Jew mocking offensive anti-Jewish stereotypes.

But, today, 2006, America is not the Borscht Belt. The general population doesn't know how to handle this brand of foolishness. Nor do we, the Jewish public, need it.

I am not saying that because of age, Wallace and Mason should quit and never say another word. (With that rule, you would soon enough be kicking me out of this job.)

Mike Wallace can interview hundreds of famous people, but some bad guys deserve to be unmasked, not fawned over.

As for Jackie Mason, what should I tell a guy who calls Abe Foxman of the Anti Defamation League a gonif (crook) and Oprah Winfrey "one sick Yenta (busybody plus)." Make a living with your one-man show, but sheket bevakasha (be quiet, please) when it comes to off-the-cuff, off-the-wall, remarks about Jews and public policy.