I never have understood that Trump insult “Sleepy Eyes” that he uses for a particular tv news host. Jim Wright has an explanation.
Another Sunday morning, another attack on the press from the President of the United States.
“Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Fake News NBC just stated that we…”
Wait.
Back up.
Sleepy Eyes?
Sleepy eyes? What? I asked (rhetorically I thought) my audience on Twitter, what does “Sleepy Eyes” even mean as an insult?
Huh?
Sleepy Eyes Chuck of the Fake News? I said, “it’s like he’s tweeting really bad fanfic one line at time. Fifty Shades of Fly Hair Tiny Hands.”
Sleepy eyes.
Ok. Sure.
Except … well, I should have known better. Several readers pointed out that “sleepy eyes” is an anti-Semitic dog-whistle, a racist insult regarding Jews.
And I thought, no, that can’t be … right, can it?
It can. It is. And it’s far worse than that.
I did not know “sleepy eyes” was an anti-Semitic slur.
But it sure didn’t take long to find the truth.
The term’s origin comes from a list of criteria used by Nazi secret police to determine who might be a jew. This list includes traits such as a widow’s peak, dark curly hair, attached earlobes, weak or pointed chins, thick lips with a commonly protruding lower lip, head shape including a low sloped forehead and high flat back of skull … and thick eyelids giving a wary expression of “sleepy, untrustworthy eyes.”
This list was promulgated to the German population via the Gestapo and other Nazi authorities, and commonly used to identify suspected Jews for arrest and removal.
After WWII and the Nazi’s defeat, that list naturally found it’s way to various neo-Nazi, White Supremacist, and other anti-Semitic groups.
“How to spot a jew” is a common search phrase on Google, and the results are hundreds of variations on this list of Nazi-originated criteria.
Chuck Todd is Jewish, a fact that Trump most certainly knows.
It is unlikely in the extreme that Trump would pick “sleepy eyes Chuck Todd” as an insult at random and without malice aforethought.
While Trump himself may or may not know the origin of the insult and who commonly uses that slur today, it’s obvious he surrounds himself with people who use this term openly in the halls of government and business and who DO know what the phrase means and how it is intended.
So that’s interesting. I had no idea.
Do his eyes look especially sleepy?
I’m gonna go with “no.” They’re just eyes. They’re in his face. His face isn’t completely flat – but then whose face is? His eyes are set in his head, the way everyone’s eyes are. They don’t look any sleepier than anyone else’s that I can see. So yes, I think Jim Wright’s explanation makes sense.
And how utterly fucking disgusting it is.
Comments
36 responses to “Always worse than we know”
OB: Who gives a damn what he looks like?
Even without the antisemitic subtext, it is childish in the extreme. The President of the United States is behaving as an overgrown kid, with a brain to match.
Were he a British or an Australian prime minister, this sort of thing would start processes going for a no-confidence vote in cabinet or parliament, and he would be out on his ear.
In America, it will probably take a bit longer.
Trump. Trump who picks people for office based on if they look the part. Based on his idea of what Central Casting would send out for a National Security Advisor – a Secretary of Education – a general.
I googled it and there’s literally no mention of this anywhere. Are you people seriously just making shit up because it’s convenient?
HFS
Omar…I know that. Of course it doesn’t matter what he looks like. I’ve written about the stupid “Sleepy Eyes” insult before. Since I’d written about it before and this was new information to me, I decided to start with the literal aspect of the insult, to point out that it doesn’t make sense on that level, before going on to say there’s an explanation for that.
I mean did you actually think I was saying it would be cool to call him that if he actually did have “sleepy eyes”?
And this from the Don of the Kriminal Kike Klan? (Not sure the terms are Kuite Kosher, but if the shoe fits.)
Gary – oh really? You Googled it and got nothing? You must be using a very broken Google.
OB:
Not at all.
Trump: “Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Fake News NBC…”
Jim Wright: ‘Sleepy Eyes’ is an antisemitic slur…
OB: They don’t look any sleepier than anyone else’s that I can see. So yes, I think Jim Wright’s explanation makes sense. And how utterly fucking disgusting it is.
I don’t take your comment there as an endorsement of Trump or of his decision to come out as an anti-semite. Quite the opposite. Even if Chuck Todd had some grizzly bear genes, had just come out of winter hibernation, and looked as sleepy as all-get-out, it would make no difference at all to the intent of Trump’s remark. President Pussygrabber can be safely assumed NOT to have been talking about Todd’s physical appearance. IMHO his dog-whistling has reached a new low, but I would guess he is still well above the lowest of his possibilities.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/how-to-understand-anti-semitism-in-trumps-america.html
@ 3 Gary
No, these people aren’t. It took me like a couple of minutes:
gentilenation.com/uploads/3/1/0/2/31022531/how_to_recognize_and_identify_a_jew_-_part_1.pdf
See page 19 of above for “The Jewish ‘Sleepy-eye’”.
From “How to Recognize a Jew”:
shadowmasterminds.wordpress.com/how-to-recognize-a-jew/
You have to copy paste the links, I’m not hard linking that shit.
Now I have to go take a shower. You’re welcome.
Also, lest we forget:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jul/05/donald-trumps-star-david-tweet-recap/
I wonder if Trumpy was extra grumpy on Sunday because Melania sat with the Obamas at the funeral, and looked more relaxed and happy than she’s looked since….well actually, I haven’t seen pictures of her looking so at ease since Trump announced he was running for the presidency.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/shortcuts/2018/apr/23/why-are-the-bushes-clintons-obamas-and-melania-smiling-so-broadly-at-a-funeral
The header photo for that article will certainly NOT be hanging on the Oval Office wall any time soon.
http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/story3.htm This seems to be the “source” for these baseless claims (aside from Twitter). The word “sleepy” does not even appear. Rather, it says “The Jewish look is wary and piercing.”
Can someone please provide me a link to an actual source showing this is a slur? Neither I nor anyone else has heard it before and the only articles that come up are gossip sites like EW and blogs like this. Absolutely nothing before Trump used the term seems to exist, so it really appears to be a made-up accusation.
Well Ophelia, we’re all waiting for you to provide those non-existent google links.
Gary is right. There’s literally nothing on google that wasn’t written this week (like this page).
Help! I’ve googled “sleepy eyes”, “anti-semitic”, “how to spot a jew” and some other variations, and I can’t find a primary source for this, just articles that link back to here and to Jim Wright’s tweets. I need to be able to defend this claim when alt-righters challenge it, where did you find the scholarly research/articles about it?
Are Russian bots taking the trouble to troll B&W now?
Ophelia: I too have tried to find any mention of a primary source as “sleepy eyes” being a racial slur that has been posted prior to this week. I even used google translate to translate “sleepy eyes” into German and threw it into Google with the keyword “Nazi” (since German websites probably would have the most sources). I’ve come up with nothing.
So the next step was to find a researcher who specialises in either German, a German person, or a Holocaust researcher (I work at a university). I asked around. They all looked puzzled and told me they’d never heard of it.
I then asked a few friends who are Jewish. They’d never heard of it either. One even asked his 90+ year old grandmother from New York. She’d never heard of it either.
So it might be a slur, but it’s definitely one that most people don’t know about. So the people here asking “I want sources” are well-justified.
It’s not so much that asking for sources is not justified – it’s the sudden appearance of all these first-time commenters all saying the same thing. That spells “bot” to me.
Maybe “Gary” is a regular and I’m out of line here. But this retort in particular just oozes “bot”. It could be an inflammatory response to literally ANYTHING the preceding blog/comments addressed.
@Gary, a cheap bot would not know how to string together the trailling letter of each word of my 2end sntnc. Can you?
Polly-O also wants a citation!
Ophelia — don’t know if you really want to include a link to Stormfront on your site, but here’s a 2013 thread titled “How to Spot a Jew” that includes “sleepy eyes”:
https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t954184-2/
Took me all of 5 minutes to find on Google (hint to all our “new” commenters”): try searches that exclude “chuck todd” and you’ll avoid most of the flood of new references.
Screechy beat me to it. Mostly because I had to stop and scrub my eyes, hands and brain after reading the first two pages of that thread.
A casual google comes up with plenty of white nationalist and 1930/40’s Nazi discussion around ‘jewish’ characteristics and sleepy/droopy/lazy eyes are frequently there on the lists and part of the discussion. This may not be part of ‘common’ societal speech, but it’s clearly a strong feature of that particular subset of society. The fact that a mainstream politician, let alone the President, is using such a phrase for anything other than castigating the racist shits is deeply concerning. Especially so since Chuck Todd does not have especially sleepy eyes.
Kevin @ 20, nope, Gary is the opposite of a regular; Gary’s was one of those first-time commenters I mentioned – as Screechy says, they’re all agreeing with Polly-O. The others: Jo @ 13 and 14, JeffK627 @ 16, Gabrielle @ 18.
Where do the IP’s trace back to? Any of the known blocks used by trolls?
Do I believe Gabrielle sought out “a researcher”? Do I believe she works at a university? Do I believe she “asked around”? Do I believe “they all looked puzzled”? Do I believe she “then asked a few friends who are Jewish”? Do I believe “one even asked his 90+ year old grandmother from New York”?
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I don’t believe a single one of those claims. They all sound very Wally Smith.
I haven’t bothered checking the IPs because I assume they’re masking the real ones.
Fakers have gotten more sophisticated since Wally’s heyday.
Not that Trump needs any help being a racist asshole, but I wonder if this particular epithet was suggested to him. Not that I want to give him the benefit of the doubt; far from it. I just think he’s too dim and lazy to have come up with this on his own. I can’t imagine him coming across this or remembering it from primary sources. Most of his name-calling seems just so childish; even “Pochahontas” is likely stretching for the only Native American women he (or his audience) is likely to know. I just don’t see him being capable of (for him) such under-the-radar subtlety without help or prompting. Otherwise, this looks too much like work for Trump to have done it on his own. I’m thinking it was presented to him by someone more widely read in these things. Did someone on Fox use this phrase recently…?
And the visiting bots have now established for themselves the “fact” that there is no historical basis for this usage whatsoever. I wonder if any other blogs discussing this (assuming there are any others at all) have been similarly bombed with this new “fact” , planting seeds of doubt in unwary minds.
Trump has a Jewish son-in-law, three Jewish grandkids and a daughter who converted to Judaism.
If Chuck Todd looks anything, he looks dopey.
Perhaps Trump meant ‘dopey-eyed’ instead.
Yes, I know, John. I think we’re all well aware of Trump’s Jewish son-in-law. If you think that’s a slam dunk “Trump cannot be anti-Semitic” you’re clueless.
Also I note the charming effect of your assisting Trump in insulting a random tv journalist by attacking his looks. Why? Anyone Trump hates you hate too? Just general malice and aggro?
Notice you’re not vulnerable to snotty attacks on your appearance, because we don’t know what you look like. We can see your personality though. It’s something worse than “dopey.”
And in fact, I don’t think I can take any more of your poison here. I think this is goodbye.
The thing that really amuses me about the Trump defence team that’s swooped in here is the very idea that anybody needs to invent reasons to make Trump look bad. This is just the latest example in a very long line of examples of Trump showing Trump to be a complete arse.
YNNB
Could have picked it up from Steve Bannon. Or one of his other pals.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/14/donald_trump_s_ties_to_alt_right_white_supremacists_are_extensive.html
Lady M, Bannon holds low odds (high prob.) for the role of souffleur here. He was competing hard with the Jared for the position of holding the Ear of Pig, and lost and left, but stayed in touch presumably. Bannon is a sly, vengeful guy with dark agendas. He had a few fingers in the failed Ecosphere 2 experiment, if you recall.
Lady M; that make’s sense.