Debbie Schlussel

Debbie Schlussel (born April 9, 1969) is an American attorney, film critic, political commentator, and a blogger. She has been published in the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times and The Jerusalem Post among other media.

Besides writing, she has appeared on several television programs. In her writing, she focuses on national security, Islam, American Muslims, illegal immigrants, pop culture, liberals, politics and the American politics.

Early life and political career

Schlussel was born in Southfield, Michigan to a family of Polish Jewish descent. Her father, H.L. Schlussel, was the son of immigrants. An ophthalmologist who also served in the United States Army, he has been a major influence in his daughter's life.^[1] She became active in politics at an early age, joining the National Teenage Republicans. She worked for Republican Congressman Mark D. Siljander at age 16, was a Jack Kemp delegate at the 1988 Republican National Convention and has worked on numerous political campaigns.^[2]

Schlussel received a BA from the University of Michigan and later earned a JD and MBA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1990, Schlussel ran for the Republican nomination for the 4th District (Oakland County) of the Michigan House of Representatives. She was defeated by Barbara Dobb by a single vote from around 8500 cast.^[3] Schlussel has since claimed that voter fraud led to her defeat, making allegations of impropriety against the family of her opponent and the judge who ruled on the issue.^[4]

In 1998, she stood for nomination to the same district (now renamed the 39th) against Marc Shulman. Schlussel has continued to attack Shulman, in particular when he received the Republican nomination for the Michigan Supreme Court and was defeated.^[5][6][7]

Professional life and views

Schlussel is a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, who reviews films for both radio and her web site.^[8] The New York Times described her in 2010 as, "a kind of all-purpose film critic, political commentator and Web opinion spinner."^[9] Her columns (mainly about politics) have been published in the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and The Jerusalem Post, amongst others. Her film reviews are posted at Big Hollywood, which is part of Breitbart.com. She was a talk show host on radio in Detroit, from 2002 to 2003.^[10]

View of Muslims

The main focus of Schlussel's journalism is writing about elements of American Islamic society that she views as negative. For example, as a right-wing observer of Arab Detroit, she has written about potential terrorists in that Arab-American community.^[11] Schlussel has often alleged that mainstream American politicians, ranging from Republican Fred Thompson to Democrat Barack Obama, have connections with radical Islam,^[12] and in October 2001 she criticized President George W. Bush for alleged ties to the Council on American–Islamic Relations,^[13] a group with which she would tangle in court a decade later.^[14][15] In 2005, Schlussel achieved some notoriety because of an editorial in the Wall Street Journal accusing Morgan Spurlock (who produced the documentary series 30 Days and film Super Size Me) of unbalanced and faulty methods in preparing a documentary about Islam.^[16][17]

Also in 2005, Schlussel opined that "WNBA players are bad role models for young girls", citing as one example Anna DeForge, who is a lesbian.^[18][19] She was criticized for these statements by player Kayte Christensen in an Arizona Republic column.^[19][20]

During and following the 2006 captivity of American journalist Jill Carroll in Iraq, Schlussel said that Carroll hated Israel and America, and implied that Carroll sympathized with her captors.^[21][22] When objections were raised,^[23][24] she responded to her critics as "blind worshippers of Jill Carroll" in need of "LASIK."^[25] In 2007, she said that atheists are intolerant of Christians,^[26][27] and wrote that American Muslims are no more moderate than those in the Middle East; that blog post of hers was read aloud on The Rush Limbaugh Show.^[28][29] Other conservative commentators have not been so favorable; for example, Aaron Goldstein and John Tabin of The American Spectator have criticized Schlussel for not being very diligent and for being unreliable.^[30][31]

In 2011, Schlussel provoked controversy by her comments after CBS reporter Lara Logan was sexually assaulted while covering Egyptian protests. Schlussel stated, "Lara Logan was among the chief cheerleaders of this 'revolution' by animals. Now she knows what Islamic revolution is really all about. So sad, too bad, Lara."^[32][33][34]

Calling for the killing of Muslims controversy

After the killing of Osama bin Laden, Schlussel wrote on her blog "1 down, 1.8 billion to go", referring to the world's Muslim population.^[32][35][36] In 2011, she was listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as one of 10 people in the United States' "Anti-Muslim Inner Circle".^[37][38]

Controversies related to comments on the Holocaust

On May 30, 2012 Schlussel wrote a blog post^[39] commenting about a speech by President Barack Obama, in which he mistakenly used the phrase "Polish death camps" referring to the German death camps in occupied Poland.^[40][41] Schlussel said Obama owed no apology for his remark, and she criticized....

the feigned shock and fake moralizing over his comments, yesterday, about German Nazi death camps in Poland being a Polish death camp...Poles murdered millions of Jews, they maintained several death camps, and they wiped out almost all of both sides of my family, as well as those in hundreds of thousands of other Jewish families. This wasn’t just the Nazis. It was tens of thousands of eager Poles and more.^[39]

In addition to discussing Polish collaboration with the Nazis, she said that a "majority were all too happy for the Judenrein". Furthermore she discounted the Polish Righteous Among the Nations by stating that only a "very tiny few" gentile Poles aided the Jews.^[39] Her commentary provoked protest in Poland.^[42] The chairman of the Polish Parliament's Foreign Affairs Commission, Grzegorz Schetyna, called her commentary a pack of lies.^[43] In its daily news release, the Polish government-affiliated Institute of National Remembrance dubbed Schlussel's commentary as defamatory.^[44]

Holocaust survivor controversy

In 2014, Schlussel alleged that Jewish children who escaped Europe prior to World War II via the kindertransport were not Holocaust survivors. The St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center referred to the blog post in which Schlussel made this claim as "vicious" and issued a statement asserting that "We at the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center define a survivor as someone who lived and suffered under Nazi occupation. This definition was informed by the official terminology used by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, DC: '…any person, Jewish or non-Jewish, who was displaced, persecuted, or discriminated against due to racial, religious, ethnic, social and political policies of the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In addition to former inmates of concentration camps, ghettos and prisons, this definition includes, among others, people who were refugees or were in hiding.' Likewise, Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, defines survivors, as “Jews who lived for any amount of time under Nazi domination, direct or indirect, and survived.” Clearly, those rescued through a kindertransport meet the above criteria."^[45]

The statement went on to say that "By creating her own personal designation of who is a survivor, Schlussel dishonors and discredits thousands of other individuals who were torn away from their families, suffered displacement and sometimes abuse and neglect in their new, unfamiliar surroundings. Most never saw their parents again, as was the case for the target of her vitriol, who lost both parents, and other family members in Auschwitz."^[45]

See also

• History of the Jews in Metro Detroit

References

External links

• Debbieschlussel.com
• Debbieschlussel.com Site Info from Alexa.com