I became a fan of Bill Buckley many years ago, when I read God and Man at Yale. I still remember with delight his discussion of the sociology professor (I think it was) who had declared that he would take transubstantiation seriously when the chemists discovered traces of hemoglobin in the sacramental wine. That was a liberal Establishment, Protestant “in” joke that Bill properly found as tasteless and as vulgar as it was theologically and philosophically irrelevant.
In part because of this, I wondered at the publication of Keith Mano’s “Jews for Jesus” article in the September 30 NR. His remarks about his “Orthodox Jewess” girlfriend struck me as the kind of humor that is uproarious, after several drinks, in a Gentilesonly country club. The fact that I believe that country clubs should be allowed to exclude Jews—or Gentiles —in no way mitigates the fact that I find these remarks as tasteless and as vulgar as Bill found—and persuaded me to find—those about transubstantiation.
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