Kate McMillan's prank

I've been asked by concerned friends whether I think Kate McMillan's prank is anti-Semitic. In my opinion, it's not. Even the target of the prank, Warren Kinsella, doesn't go that far -- he calls it "appalling" and a "disgrace". No doubt many will find it so; but it's difficult to take such outrage at face value from a master prankster himself. Kinsella does question Kate's support for Israel, which is a pretty big stretch, and it's demolished by a quick glance at Kate's years of pro-Israel, anti-jihadist blogging -- frankly a better track record than Kinsella has.

Some quick background: Warren Kinsella received an e-mail appearing to be from eitan@terleski7.com along with a photo of an arm with a number tattooed on it. The e-mail message didn't describe the photo, but Kinsella naturally assumed it was a Holocaust survivor's tattoo. Kinsella posted the picture and the message, saying he was honoured to receive it.

In fact, the e-mail address was a spoof; it was sent by Kate sent by Kate's friend, Richard Evans. The tattoo number was her motorcycle's serial number.

Is that, as Kinsella says on his blog, Kate calling the Holocaust itself a joke? No; there is nothing pejorative about Kate's e-mail, other than she used an image that is considered by polite company to be out-of-bounds for humour or pranks. Her e-mail wasn't a comment on the Holocaust; it used a reference to the Holocaust as a surefire way to set up Kinsella, whose hagiographic depictions of himself as a modern-day Nazi-hunter make one reach for insulin. The point of the prank might not be immediately obvious to those who haven't followed the long-simmering Kinsella-Kate feud. But it's offensive only in the sense that The Producers is.

It would probably make anyone uncomfortable to see The Producers (or other Holocaust-themed humour) in the company of Holocaust survivors; I would not want to laugh at the jokes for fear of being insensitive. Kate's prank was less funny than those instances, and the instrument of the prank -- a faked photo of a tattooed arm -- was less tasteful. 

So where was the humour in it? Much of it was insider jokes: the spoofed e-mail address Kate chose; the name she gave to the photo file. But the broader humour of it -- a "roast" would be a better description -- is easy to spot: Kinsella himself likes to send anonymous and tasteless e-mails around; Kinsella's good friend and fellow "human rights activist" Richard Warman even plants outrageously offensive comments on the Internet, and then complains about them -- something that casts doubt on every instance of "hate" that Warman and Kinsella "find" that hasn't been verified independently.

Kinsella is a Simon Wiesenthal in his own mind; receiving such a flattering, if cryptic, e-mail appealled to his self-image as an underrecognized hero.

I think that's an interesting difference here. Both Kate and Kinsella regard themselves as friends of the Jews; both campaign against what they regard as hatred. But though he's the bigger talker, Kinsella limits himself to snipe hunts against harmless, politically incorrect cranks. Kate would rather die before calling herself a "human rights activist", but arguably her defence of Israel and Western liberal values would give her more right to that title than Kinsella.

Kate's prank was not an eloquent witticism. It was a blunt demonstration of Kinsella's lack of Internet street smarts, and of the double standard he himself holds when it comes to insensitive comments. (And that's another difference: Kate's e-mail "entrapped" Kinsella; Warman's e-mails aren't as subtle -- he doesn't entrap people into uttering racist remarks, he outright plants those racist remarks himself.)

Kate's is not a prank I would have done. I've been to Yad Vashem too often to be irreverent about tattoos on Holocaust survivors. I'll grant Kinsella that it was humour in questionable taste. But it's not anti-Semitic.