Oklahoma Republican Says the Words 'Jew Me Down' on the House Floor

By Lindy West  |  April 23, 2013 | 1:30am
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Because of his awesome judgment and giant brain, Oklahoma State Representative Dennis Johnson broke out the phrase “Jew me down on a price” during a floor debate about the challenges facing small businesses. After someone slipped him a note pointing out that it’s 20-fucking-13 and the last year in which it was acceptable to say “Jew me down on a price” was approximately…uhhh…4?…the year 4?…Johnson issued an extremely embarrassed and remorseful apology was basically like, “LOLOLOLLLOLOLOL I don’t give a fuuuuuuuuuuck.”

Johnson continued speaking, apparently unaware that he had made the remark, for a few seconds before someone off-camera passed him a note. Johnson replied, “Did I?”
The phrase “Jew me down” is defined as “negotiating a lower price” and is considered to be ethnically offensive.
Johnson then jokingly added, to laughter from the room: “I apologize to the Jews. They’re good small businessmen as well.”

Baller move, Dennis Johnson. Nailed it. Because there’s no better way to atone for using insulting stereotypes (during an official government proceeding, no less!) than to just repeat the same insulting stereotype with slightly different phrasing and a phlegmy old-white-guy chuckle. See, Dennis Johnson doesn’t think that all Jewish people are grasping misers with shrewd, ruthless business sense. He just thinks that the ethnoreligious background of all Jewish people makes them, as a group, shrewd, ruthless businesspeople (sorry—businessmen) who pinch all of the pennies with their long, sneaky business-fingers! It’s a compliment! WAY TO TAKE EVERYTHING OUT OF CONTEXT, DEMOCRAPS. It’s like you can’t even be a willfully clueless old white establishment wheezebag anymore without the thought police marching in and telling you not to use anti-Semitic slurs on the state house floor. What is this, Nazi Germany!?!?!?!

You know, once upon a time, in like nineteen-eighty-goddamn-nine, I was seven years old and I heard another kid say that his parents “Jewed [him] out of [his] allowance.” And I was like, “Wow, that is clearly not an okay thing to say,” and I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO ASK MY MOM FOR CONFIRMATION. That day marked the beginning and the end of my intellectual struggle to understand why using “Jew” as a verb is some unacceptable shit. I was seven.

So I guess that makes Dennis Johnson an idiot, a bigot, or six.

 
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