Jews and Koreans

"As a Jewish child I was regularly instructed, both subtly and openly, that Jews, the people of Maimonides, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk and Meyer Lansky, were on the whole smarter, cleverer, more brilliant, more astute than other people," writes Michael Chabon — Chosen, but Not Special. (An interesting thought experiment would be to substitute the words "Germans" or "WASPs" for "Jews" in the above and gage the response — The Holocaust has covered a multitude of sins in the modern imagination.) But Mr. Chabon's essay argues that "Jews are stupid in roughly the same proportion as all the world’s people," something I disagree with, but give him credit for saying.

I've heard it said that Koreans are often instructed, both subtly and openly, that they are the second smartest, cleverest, most brilliant, most astute people, after the Jews, of course. They may be right, for what it's worth. I've posted before about the country's "estimated average IQ of 106," making it "second only to tiny Hong Kong" — Smart Koreans — but also about the "pet theory of mine, that due to homogeneity there a far fewer folks in Korea at the 'extremes tails of the normal curve'" — Average Koreans. (As for Jews, "it is currently accepted that the mean is somewhere in the range of 107 to 115, with 110 being a plausible compromise" — Charles Murray's Jewish Genius.)

The author that argued Koreans "suffered horrors ten times more than the Jews" reminds us that what Mr. Chabon said of his people is also true of Koreans — Jo Jung-rae on holocaust and the Japanese occupation — but I can't say the same about the Korean cartoonist at the center of this controversy — Jewish Groups Frothing at the Mouth Over Korean Cartoons. In his book about America, he simply pointed out that "the real group that controls America through money and media pressure is the Jews" and that one "can never surpass the wall of Jews in American society."