Can Jews point out that Ta-Nehisi Coates has a low IQ?

If Wokeness is over, why is TNC back?

I haven’t read MacArther Genius Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book The Message comparing Israel’s treatment of West Bank Palestinians to the former apartheid regime’s treatment of blacks in South Africa, but the same analogy was drawn by former President Jimmy Carter in his 2007 book with the curiously punctuated title Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. Certainly Carter is both a better informed observer and less of a hate-filled racist than Coates is, so Coates’ analogy would seem not beyond the pale.

But then, as The Atlantic and The Guardian like to point out, I’m the kind of crazed extremist who would admit that the former Atlantic superstar, despite his obvious deficiencies of knowledge and logic, has a decent point.

Of course, Carter was eviscerated for the saying much the same thing 17 years ago.

In contrast to criticizing me, criticizing Coates is beyond the pale (after all, Coates hates white people, so how bad could he be?), as CBS News’ Jewish anchorman Tony Dokoupil discovered when he was so impertinent as to ask Coates tough questions. From the New York Times’ news section:

CBS Rebukes Anchor Over Tense Interview With Ta-Nehisi Coates

Executives said the interview, conducted by the morning show anchor Tony Dokoupil, had fallen short of network editorial standards.

By Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin

Oct. 7, 2024

CBS News on Monday rebuked one of its star morning anchors, Tony Dokoupil, over an interview that he conducted last week with the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which Mr. Dokoupil challenged Mr. Coates’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Top CBS executives, on a newsroom-wide call, described the interview as falling short of the network’s editorial standards. The executives said their critique had been prompted by internal staff concerns, although at least one veteran CBS journalist said later on the call that she was puzzled over what exactly Mr. Dokoupil had done wrong.

The episode began last Monday when Mr. Coates visited “CBS Mornings” on a publicity tour for his book “The Message,” which in one section compares Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Jim Crow laws of the American South. In describing what he witnessed on a 10-day trip to the region last year, Mr. Coates criticized other journalists for “the elevation of factual complexity over self-evident morality.”

From the start of the interview, Mr. Dokoupil directly challenged this framing, telling Mr. Coates that “the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” The anchor added, “What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place?”

“There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state; I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are,” Mr. Coates replied. The men parried for several minutes in a tense but civil manner, with Mr. Coates at one point saying: “Either apartheid is right or wrong. It’s really, really simple.”

Their exchange concluded on a light note, with Mr. Dokoupil, who is Jewish, telling Mr. Coates that he was “still invited to High Holidays” to a chorus of laughter on the set.

The interview created a social media uproar. Fans of Mr. Coates accused Mr. Dokoupil of bias, with one writer for Vox calling his questions “hostile, combative and rude.” …

I’ll carry on with the TNC Question below the Paywall: