Yesterday there was an article in my university’s newspaper reviewing a recent Jimmy Eat World concert. In the headline and in most places in the article they abbreviated “Jimmy Eat World” as “JEW.” I thought it was a rather odd choice to chose to abbreviate it, especially as the abbreviation spells a real word that has nothing to do with the band. However, I know that newspapers love to use abbreviations when possible to save space (although I know that using an obscure abbreviation in a headline is poor style), so I figured that was it.
Then today they ran this letter to the editor (this link won’t work tomorrow), which says in part:
She didn’t explain exactly why she thought it was offensive, and I admit I’m a little lost as to why she did. Yeah, the abbreviation spells “Jew.” I could understand if it spelled “KIKE” or somthing offensive in and of itself, but as far as I know “Jew” is a neutral word. The article itself (I can’t link to it because it apparently hasn’t been archived yet) said nothing remotely offensive towards Jews. It just used the abbreviation “JEW.”
Is this girl nuts, or is there some reason to take offense that I’m not seeing?
I would guess that it is just the fact that the paper co-opted the proud name of a group of people its own, unrelated use. She didn’t like the fact that it was “stolen” as an abbreviation as something else in a headline where it would be misleading. She may also have misunderstood and thought that “Jimmy Eat World” used JEW to describe itself.
I can see her point just a little but it is a frivilous complaint IMHO.
I don’t think it’s offensive, and I don’t think the paper owes the lady an apology. However, the writer was an idiot to use “JEW” and the editor was an idiot for letting it go into print that way.
I AM a Jew (and a Jimmy Eat World fan), and I think she is a twit. It is a distracting acronym, no doubt, but for all we know, the band meant for that to happen when they chose their name. In any case, seeing “JEW” in the context of that article would not offend a reasonable person, only a hypersensitive individual just looking for an excuse for indignation.
It is curious, though, that the word “Jew” is used as an epithet, when it is, in fact, the proper term for a Jewish person. Had the acronym come out “SCOT,” I doubt anyone would have blinked.
Whoever wrote that op-ed piece needs to reach around, grab that stick that’s up his ass, and give it a good hard yank. Maybe it’ll come out and he can stop being so easily insulted.
I am not Jewish, but I have always felt like there was just a slight negative aspect of “Jew”.
It’s not like its a terrible word, I think it’s just that I’ve run across “Jew” used pejoratively when an anti-semitic person says something against “Jews”. (I haven’t seen this much, if at all in real life, more when I’m reading about Nazis or other historical anti-semites).
It seems in some ways comparable to me to calling someone “a gay” versus just “gay”. I’d tend to use “Jewish person” rather than “a Jew”, though not always.
Having said that, I think the reader who wrote in was overreacting.
Apparently it’s offensive to some people. I know someone with those initials, and while on a camping trip (grad school level) required for a summer teaching program had to label all belongings with her initials. One of her fellow campers took great umbrage with this and wanted to know if she “had a problem with Jews.” Um…yeah. If she had a problem with Jews, why the hell would she put it on her own stuff? :wally
Of Jewish descent here (I’d be considered a Jew by Hitler but not by Israel), so if my opinion means anything to the discussion I’ll toss it out. I’m not the slightest bit offended by the acronym. The letter-writer seems to be going out of her way to find offense where I have no doubt none was intended. The writer was a college student, yes? This explains much of why she was offended. Once she gets out of college she’ll have real problems to worry about and won;t have the time to waste on this sort of nonsense.
I only hope the newspaper doesn’t publish one of those “we’re sorry if anyone was offended” bullshit apologies.
I guess I need to add the disclaimer that, despite the target of most of my schooltime crushes, IANAJ ;j
However, count me as someone who thinks it’s a bit awkward and doesn’t have the most positive of connotations, but it would be more trouble than it’s worth to issue an official apology, as that would set a bad precedent for any other offenderati.
I’m not Jewish (although for some odd reason people often make that mistake), but I can’t see being offended by this.
It’s a really bad headline though. “JEW uses live set to keep fans enlivened” is lousy writing even if you know that “JEW” stands for “Jimmy Eats World”. (A live set keeps fans enlivened? :rolleyes: ) But neither the band nor the acronym are anywhere near famous enough for it to be a safe assumption that the average reader would know this.
Big Jimmy Eats World fans may be different, but the band isn’t the first thing that would spring to mind upon seeing “JEW” in a headline. My immediate reaction would be that the headline was about an actual Jewish person, and that for some reason the word was being written in all capitals. Absent the context provided by the article itself, “Jew uses live set…” makes about as much sense as “Jimmy Eats World uses live set…” The purpose of a news headline is to tell people what the story is about, not be a mystery they can only solve after reading the story. Something like “JEW concert thrills fans” would have at least made it more clear that the subject was a musical group.
Thanks for your opionions everybody. I was just wondering if there was something I didn’t quite get about this, but I guess the letter writer is just hypersensitive.
I do think that the use of the acronym in the headline was poor style (but not offensive), but I think its use in the article was fine.
Was. In part of the letter I didn’t quote, she mentioned that she is a graduate now living in Chicago who reads the paper online. She signed the letter with her name followed by “President of the Chicago Chapter of the UH Alumni Organization.”
The paper printed no answer to letter, which is a good sign that they’re not going to respond to her complaint one way or the other, which is their general strategy for goofy complaints like this.
A couple of years ago, they responed to a slew of complaints about a staff editorial by printing another editorial addressing the complaints. This resulted in even more complaints, and the organization (a black heritage organization) even tried to block a member of the editorial staff from becoming editor-in-chief on the grounds that the entire staff was biased against black issues. The editorial staff member in question was black. All this fianlly resulted in the editorial staff printing this editorial.
I guess after all that they learned not to feed the trolls.
I once had a professor who was a Jew that took offense at the fact we would refer to someone as “jewish”, and tried to get us to say “Jew” (this was a history class, so the term came up fairly often). I’m still not comforatble saying “Jew” - it smacks as being derogatory. Come to think of it, this prof. took offense at a lot ot things, so he might not be representative… ;j
); I’m not offended in the least.