Tom Wolfe Responds to Aby Rosen's Anti-Semitic Charge

Tom Wolfe responded in this week's Observer to Aby Rosen's allegations of anti-Semitism in Mr. Wolfe's 2006 New York Times op-ed about Mr. Rosen's plans for 980 Madison.

Here was Mr. Rosen in The Observer last week:

I like productive criticism; I try to criticize things all the time, not because I’m so important. … I want equal criticism; it’s just the way you deliver it. It had a nasty undertone that I didn’t care much for. I grew up in Germany postwar as a Jewish child; I did not need an anti-Semitic undertone ...

I’ve seen a lot of anti-Semites who mingle with Jews left and right. … But let’s not get into that.

Here's Mr. Wolfe in a letter to the editor this week (not yet online):

If Aby Rosen sincerely detects "an anti-Semitic overtone" in a reference to his "tummy" in The New York Times, then I find that very sad and pitiable quite in addition to being preposterous in the extreme.