Business Insider’s chief editor and CEO, Henry Blodget tried to crowdsource an answer to the question, Why Do People Hate Jews?
Bad move. In the context of Blodget’s column, the question gave legitimacy to anti-Semitism. And a stereotypical photo of Chassidic Jews added to the incongruity.
When the wisdom of the crowd rightly concluded this was idiocy, Blodget backtracked by tweaking the headline a few times and posting updates on the page. Demonstrating how seriously he views anti-Semtism, Blodget ditched the original photo for Natalie Portman (!?).
In the end, Blodget apologized at the top of his post. It strikes me as sincere and Blodget, I think, gets it now — though Portman still graces the top of the page. That’s ill-advised.
Anti-Semitism’s an important discussion to have, but there’s a time and a place for everything. Blodget’s intentions aside, discussing anti-Semitism at Business Insider under Portman’s smile is like discussing the Tokyo stock exchange at Yad Vashem’s web site illustrated with a stereotypical image of Godzilla.
Backstory with more links and screengrabs at The Daily Dot/Storify.
