UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Before taking a few days off for the long Memorial Day weekend, we feel an obligation to address some unfinished business: a recent email exchange with blogger Steve Sailer involving the item "Scraping Bottom" (May 10), which followed up on an earlier item, "The Spectrum from Blue to Red" (May 5). If posting the exchange smacks of a little too much inside baseball, we apologize.

----- Original Message -----
From: SteveSlr@aol.com
To: jherman@artsjournal.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 8:01 PM
Subject: "Anti-Semitic slur"?

You posted:

SCRAPING BOTTOM

Thanks to anti-liberal columnist and blogger Steve Sailer for clarifying the chart that correlated state-by-state average IQs and income with the votes for Bush or Gore in the 2000 presidential election. When we posted the item "The Spectrum from Blue to Red," we wrote: "The chart that explains it all for you" (an homage to Christopher Durang's outrageous satire, "Sister Mary Explains It All For You," which drove conservatives nuts). We also wrote that the chart "could be a joke," but "if so, it's a good one. No worse, certainly, than the outcome" of the election.

The trouble with Sailer's clarification is that he gets to the bottom of things by scraping bottom with an anti-Semitic slur when he writes that "anyone familiar with the topic would quickly recognize the fallaciousness of the data. The 113 [IQ] figure for Connecticut is way too high. That's about what Connecticut would be if it was all-Jewish."

posted by janherman @ Monday, May 10, 2004 | Permanent link/

Dear Sir or Madam:

You accused me of making an anti-Semitic slur, which is a very serious accusation, by mentioning that the average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews in America is around 113.

Considering that you slurred Republicans by publishing fraudulent IQ data, I'd be fascinated to learn the logic by which you arrived at the conclusion that I slurred Jews by mentioning accurate data. I'm familiar with about ten different estimates of American Jewish IQs published in refereed scientific journals. They range from 107.5 to 118. The scientist who is currently working the most on this topic told me that 113 is the best estimate. All the real world correlates of IQ -- educational level, income, scientific and literary accomplishments, etc. -- are roughly in line with that figure.

You seem to be implying that Jews are less intelligent. Besides apologizing to me, you should apologize for making an anti-Semitic slur.

Steve Sailer

----- Original Message -----
From: jherman@artsjournal.com
To: SteveSlr@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 7:42 PM
Subject: Re: "Anti-Semitic slur"?

Dear Mr. Sailer --

You just don't get it. What was the point of singling out the Jews as a group? It doesn't matter what their collective IQ is, high or low. They as a group had nothing to do with the issue you're so riled up about. By singling them out in the way you did you're trying to paint them as some sort of "other," something separate and alien, which is at the root of anti-Semitism. There also seemed to me an implicit ridicule. Why didn't you name some other group? Why choose the Jews? Further, in harping on how I fell for a hoax, you conveniently ignored what I wrote in my original post of the chart: "This could be a joke. If so, it's a good one. No worse, certainly, than the outcome of the 2000 election."

Sincerely,
Jan Herman

Footnote: Sailer never mentioned "Ashkenazi" Jews in his original blog. Even if he had, singling them out among Jews in general because of some actual study, worthy or not (which also went unmentioned), would not have mitigated the offense.