Regular readers know that I belong to a widely reviled minority; contempt is increasingly heaped upon us without letup or shame.
I’m referring, of course, to people who put ketchup on hot dogs.
Not that I do it all the time — Friday I biked over to Little Louie’s, the beloved Northbrook frankfurter joint, and ordered two chardogs, one with mustard, grilled onions and relish, for my wife, and one with mustard, grilled onions and a pickle spear for me. I don’t relish relish.
So not habitual with the ketchup. But I do reserve the right. And I push back against those riding the you-can’t-be-a-Chicagoan-and-put-ketchup-on-your-hot-dog hobby horse. It’s an old joke — Bugs Bunny goes to the steakhouse, slathers his steak with ketchup, and an incensed French chef in a tall toque chases him out of the restaurant with a cleaver.
It isn’t that Chicagoans don’t put ketchup on hot dogs — some obviously do. It’s that certain Chicagoans pretend to care about it, deeply.
Why? A stab at sophistication — afraid of being considered rubes, Chicagoans insist upon their gustatory refinement. And a kind of parody of prejudice — we might not be able to mock the folks we once loved to mock, but we sure can still mock you, you loathsome ketchup lover you.
This is a popular gambit among New York advertising agencies trying to spray a whiff of authentic Chicago on their puffery like someone dosing an outhouse with a blast of Febreze.
Which is why I was surprised to see the Jewish United Fund, a venerable Chicago organization — founded in 1900 — launch an ad showing a frank with a single zigzag of ketchup.
“Hey Chicago,” it taunts. ‘Antisemitism is up 400%. Don’t just hold the ketchup. Hold the hate.”
Et tu, JUF? We ketchup lovers don’t get enough grief? Is JUF now lumping us with antisemites?
“No, no, no,” said Elizabeth Abrams, a spokesperson for the JUF. “It’s not saying if you put ketchup on your hot dog you are an antisemite. We want to remind and inform the greater Chicago community that antisemitism is a pervasive problem.”
They’ve got that right.
To imagine that the Trump administration is fighting antisemitism by going after universities for their anti-Israel protests is like pretending Donald Trump is against insurrection because he sent the Marines into Los Angeles.
History is clear: Authoritarianism is bad for Jews. Hating Jews feels so natural to some that opposing it seems controversial. The Chicago Park District rejected the organization’s sign.
I asked the park district: What gives?
“The District maintains viewpoint-neutral restrictions on sponsorship and advertising agreements,” it said in a statement, among other things, “advertising spaces are regulated to ensure they do not become public forums for speech which could result in content that is offensive or objectionable to individuals or groups. These standards are applied consistently and have led to the denial of other requests.”
So fighting antisemitism is offensive to some? I suppose it is.
The version of the ad that is too edgy to put at Oak Street Beach spins what I first saw a little differently: “Who gets more hate than people who put ketchup on hot dogs? We do.”
That at least has a note of solidarity. And with its bright Vienna Beef yellow, achieves the primary goal of all advertising: to attract attention. It sure attracted mine.
To return to why this is a perilous time for Jews in America, since some Jews, despite our reputed smarts, still don’t seem to get it. I’m reading an excellent, thought-provoking book by Dara Horn called “People Love Dead Jews,” where she lays out the situation in a single paragraph far better than I could in a page:
“Since ancient times, in every place they have ever lived, Jews have represented the frightening prospect of freedom. As long as Jews existed in any society, there was evidence that it in fact wasn’t necessary to believe what everyone else believed, that those who disagreed with their neighbors could survive and even flourish against all odds. The Jews’ continued distinctiveness, despite overwhelming pressure to become like everyone else, demonstrated their enormous effort to cultivate that freedom: devotion to law and story, deep literacy, and an absolute obsessiveness about consciously transmitting those values between generations. The existence of Jews in any society is a reminder that freedom is possible, but only with responsibility — and that freedom without responsibility is not freedom at all.”
Ask yourself: Are we being governed by people who take responsibility for their words and actions? Who seem to care about law and freedom? That should tell you how dangerous today’s America is for Jews and for everybody else. As for ketchup fans, we’ll get by as best we can.