KayWWW makes a good point. Having a workshop on dressing professionally can be a way to level the playing field for folks who grew up without economic privilege. I'd take that a step further, though, and question how our notion of professional clothing reinforces markers of privilege by defining certain styles as low-class (the overstuffed purse comes to mind) and requiring dress codes that cost too much dough for many folks and tend towards the dry-clean-only categories (and in this respect men's professional clothing can be absolutely, outrageously ridiculous and impractical). If a workshop existed that helped get everyone on the same page about what is and is not professional and took things like affordability into account, it would be great.

What's really weird about this one (at least as written, I always wonder if we're getting the whole story) is a) why just women? don't men need help with dressing professionally too? and b) what the hell with the always wear heels and make-up? And why especially lipstick? That's getting to the point of obsessive. I am an executive director and psychologist, two professions that generally involve a lot of situations where professional dress is required, and I never ever wear heals and I never ever wear makeup (and if I was going to wear make-up, it wouldn't be lipstick). Because professional dress is supposed to be about communicating a certain level of seriousness and respect (and also signifying class status). I fail to see what that has to do with lovely lips and shapely legs. The jewelry thing seems equally nonsensical. Too many rings? Double-pierced ears? It's the amount of detail here that seems like either someone is really way too obsessed with what female employees are wearing or (probably more likely) someone needed to fill up time in a workshop and ran out of useful things to say.

This so should be an episode of The Office.

Just to start, I'll weigh in here on the side of historical documentation and say that I believe yes, the Nazis were practicing systematic extermination of the Jews and other groups and yes, they killed between 5 and 6 million people in that process and yes, they used gas chambers as one method to achieve those ends. When someone arguing against an historical reality suggests that you "google it," you know the caliber of information you are expected to take seriously. One might suggest that arguments made in return will not be met with anything but further insistence and misinformation and are, for that reason, a waste of time.

While I buy that some people - some very small number of highly educated people who know how to do historical research and what standards to use when evaluating historical evidence and claims to factuality - might have some legitimate academic reason to be questioning the details of the holocaust, Bishop Williamson is not one of them. It is incredibly arrogant of him to suggest that he should make his own personal examination of the evidence before coming to his own personal conclusion about this issue. Generally speaking, one does not question the validity of thousands of eye-witness accounts unless one actually has the skills needed to prove them wrong. This leads me to believe that by "evidence" he means second-hand interpretations of certain portions of the historical record. So let's be clear, he's not suggesting he go on some noble intellectual journey of discovery here. He's trying to dodge the issue.

It strikes me, though, that there are a lot of different things that might motivate someone to do that, beyond (in addition or instead of) outright hatred of Jews.

One is denial (the psychological kind): you don't want to believe that it happened, or that your country was involved, or that it was as bad as they say it is, and you don't want to look too closely at it because it's really horrible and makes you uncomfortable to think about. Same process exists in our own treatment of the massacre of Native Americans. So you grab on to some thinkers who will do the looking-at work for you and provide you with a soothing conclusion that lessens your own existential anxiety or sense of guilt.

Another is being anti-Israel (you can argue over whether or not that is the same thing as anti-semitism; I believe that it is not): since persecution of Jews is often cited as a core reason for the existence of the State of Israel, some are motivated to revise the historical record to weaken that claim to nationhood.

Another is a sort of simplistic idea of what a survivor should be: since some Jews do terrible things, the argument goes, those Jews clearly cannot be the victims themselves of terrible things. This is completely backwards, of course, and treats Jews as a monolithic group. But we see the same thinking in the outrage over minority communities that voted for Prop 8, for example. We expect our victims to uphold certain standards of victimhood, and when they don't we respond with anger. I think it threatens some deeply help cultural beliefs that we have about the teleology of suffering.

Another is the arrogance of believing that you must personally be able to understand and verify details of the historical record before you are willing to believe in them. That can start out on the spectrum of sane and healthy skepticism and blow quickly over into the realm of absolute narcissistic insanity ("if I can't personally verify the truth of something, I assume it didn't happen").

My point is not to deny the existence of anti-semitism, but to suggest that holocaust "denial" can indeed be a misnomer (or at least an oversimplification). Sometimes it's denial in the psychological sense, sometimes it's cynical and strategic, and sometimes it's just plain crazy. That doesn't make those who hold these opinions any less worthy of disdain, but it may at least help us distinguish our Soggys from our Stinks from our Bishops.