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Entry: This is where the party ends

What's the Rumpus says This is where the party ends:

I am not Jewish, but since September 11, I have been obsessed with the idea that the vicious attack on America uncovered previously hidden currents of surprisingly virulent anti-Semitism in the world. I was going to say the attacks "triggered" the anti-Semitism, but I think it's clear by now that the ancient prejudice which has increasingly reared its ugly head in the post-9/11 world is not a new creature, but a very old one which has recently, if sporadically, emerged from its dark hiding place. Occasionally, in conversations with my husband, I became so overwrought about this idea ("Somebody needs to DO something!") that he assured me I was overreacting, that no mainstreaming of anti-Semitism was taking place, that all was right with the world. But this was the same charmingly naive guy who -- when we were grad students together -- hadn't understood why I'd gotten so suddenly tight-lipped in a conversation with a Jordanian student who had begun by decrying popular representations of Arabs in the media and ended by reminding us, "Well, it's no surprise, of course. You know who controls the media." (My husband thought he meant corporations.) So despite my husband's good intentions, I wasn't comforted.