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Comment by PostOnce | Hacker News Reader

I'm watching The Merchant of Venice right now, then I pop over here and read an article about a 28 year old Jew from Chicago who made millions of dollars lending people money at an extortionate rate. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that; I'd do it myself had I but the wherewithal. I just found it funny. Like, you know his friends have to mention it to him occasionally, rib-jab style. Heh.

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> read an article about a 28 year old Jew

The most salient adjective that you can think of is "Jew" ?

WT* ?

I'm not someone who sees racism and anti-Semitism under every rock and leaf... but, seriously, WT* ?

I, for one, enjoy Hacker News more when commenters use phrases like "28 year old entrepreneur" and "40 year old physicist" and enjoy it less when the phrases are "28 year old Jew" and "40 year old Black".

One of the main characters in The Merchant of Venice is Shylock, the Jewish moneylender. That's where Goldstein's Jewishness comes in. PostOnce was just noting the coincidence of having read this article after some Shakespeare. It's not remotely anti-Semitic; calm down.

Yet PostOnce found it best to be cautious - it looks like that account was created just to write this post.

Well, it seems everyone else sees racism in all things, so I figured I'd better not throw myself under a truck in case I am misinterpreted.

That's probably wise.

This is the internet, you can write F.

I think that rampant F-bombs, like anti-semitism, lower the tone of discourse.

Then you should avoid the word fuck instead of bowdlerizing it.

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