It sounds like Tom Perkins got a talking to by the ADL (“pleasant discussion with Abe Foxman”, in his words) and now he’s apologizing for his “Kristallnacht” usage. I have the video of Perkins comments after the jump. What’s interesting, though, is what he’s apologizing for. It’s sort of narrowly about offending Jews or just being awful in comparing anything happening in the US to what happened under the Third Reich and the Holocaust.
But basically, he still thinks his message was right. Just poorly worded. Just that one word. “As a messenger I’ve been shot, but read the message.” Watch it. It’s slightly endearing, kind of weird and awkward at times. Clearly, this is a guy who’s not used to being at the center of a media firestorm. There’s much less of the shock of the horrible comparison but no less of the cluelessness, and self-awareness gap that made his letter to the editor so memorable.
Venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who is under fire for comparing the attack on America’s rich to “Kristallnacht,” was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in France in 1996 for killing someone — with his yacht.
It apparently doesn’t get much worse than the U.S. Army, according to jokes surfaced by the Washington Post from emails commanders sent to one another. Brigadier General Martin P. Schweitzer, at the time a colonel, wrote in an email to a colleague that he had masturbated “3 times over the past 2 hours” after a meeting with Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC). Ick.
Just another bizarre example of New Jersey politics and how this investigation into BridgeGate is going. State Sen. Kevin O’Toole will remain on the investigating committee even though it appears that David Wildstein, the guy at the center of the scandal, was consulting with him about what to do during the cover-up phase of the scandal.
New Jersey lawmakers had a chance today to purge a Republican state senator from investigating the bridge scandal after questions were raised about whether he was involved in the scandal itself. So what did they do?
Tom Perkins, the venture capitalist who said critiques of the 1% could lead to a Holocaust against wealthy people is doubling down in new comments to Bloomberg. “In the Nazi era it was racial demonization, now it is class demonization,” says Perkins.
In case you missed it, here’s my take on where this kind of insanity is coming from.
We’re pleased to have Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in The World, join us this week for TPM Cafe Book Club. She has a great essay written for TPM today on why poverty doesn’t explain gaps in test scores: “[I]f we consider only our most affluent kids, the top quartile of American 15 year olds by socio-economic status, we see something startling: our most privileged kids still score below their privileged peers in 26 other nations on a test of critical thinking in math.”
TPM subscribers should join us for a Q&A with Amanda Ripley on Friday at noon.
A great look at why New Jersey politics is so chronically sleazy and corrupt on a bipartisan basis.
Two white doves released by children standing by Pope Francis as a symbol of peace were immediately attacked by a renegade seagull and large black crow.
If you’ve been in the media slipstream today you know the outrage and mockery directed at Tom Perkins, one of the world’s wealthiest and most successful Silicon Valley venture capitalists, for an oped he wrote in the Wall Street Journal comparing the rising critique of income inequality and “the 1%” to Kristallnacht. Just so we’re all on the same page, Kristallnacht (“the night of shattered glass”) was essentially the opening act of Hitler’s Final Solution. It took place on November 9th and 10th, 1938. This claim manages simultaneously to be so logically ridiculous and morally hideous that Perkins deserves every bit of abuse he’s already receiving.
But I think we’re missing the point if we see this as the gaffe of one aging, coddled jerk. Because it’s only a more extreme and preposterous version of beliefs that have become increasingly widespread in the wealthiest sectors of American society, especially since 2008 and the twin events of the global financial crisis and the election of Barack Obama.