 DECEMBER 26 • 2019 | 5

letters

‘
Jewish Radio Hour’
This fan of radio loved your 
articles about Dovid Nissan 
Roetter’
s King David Network 
and Mike Smiths “Jewish 
Radio in Detroit History.
” The 
evolution of broadcast media is 
fascinating. 

I was a bit mystified that 
Smith did not mention Rabbi 
Herschel Finman’
s “Jewish 
Radio Hour,
” running here for 
24 years, now also available in 
podcast format. I think your 
readers should know about it 
if they don’
t already. It’
s worth 

a listen. It’
s on Sundays from 
11 a.m.-noon on WLQV 1500 
AM, 92.7 FM, and streaming 
at faithtalkdetroit.com. 

Yehudis Brea

Oak Park

Views

T

here are many songs 
and ditties about a 
number of animals out 
there: five little 
ducks, five little 
monkeys, three 
blind mice. 
In some 
tunes, the ani-
mals have all 
kinds of unusual 
experiences: The 
cow jumped over the moon, 
a white-fleeced lamb went to 
school with Mary, this little 
piggie went shopping while this
one sat down to what sounded 
like a delicious dinner and 
even the charming old weasel 
goes … pop!
There are even songs 
about insects: The “
Ants Go 
Marching One by One.
” “The 
“Itsy-Bitsy Spider.
” “There was 
an Old Lady who Swallowed 
a Fly.
”
Move over tame animals, 
we’
re celebrating the world 
of prey now; the latest ditty 
that’
s won the hearts of folks 
everywhere is the “Baby Shark 
Song.
”
Although it seems to have 
popped out of nowhere and is 
suddenly everywhere you turn, 
its actually been around for a 
while. It began as a camp song 
back in the 1900s, which grad-
uated to a rather dark German 
song called “Kleiner Hai” by 

Alemuel. It was later 
translated to English but 
remained rather depress-
ing. In most early ver-
sions, people’
s limbs were eaten 
one by one. Not too surprising, 
it didn’
t catch on with kids. 
After years of obscurity, 
in 2015, Pinkfong, a South 
Korean media company that 
produces videos for kids, 
refurbished this old ditty. They 
added some bright colors, 
threw in a couple of cute kids 
and gave it a nice happily ever 
after, not to mention a beat so 
catchy parents find themselves 
still singing it long after their 
kids have fallen asleep. 
Its YouTube clip has been 
viewed more than 4 billion 
times. (Anyone with young 
kids will probably say, “
A few 
thousand of those views were 
from my house alone.
”) For 
comparison sake, Kidscreen 
says the most watched 
YouTube kids’
 video of 2019 
was Cocomelon’
s “This is the 
Way” — and that was only 
viewed 128 million times.
Story has it that Pinkfong 
really wanted to use the theme 
music from Jaws as the open-
ing bars for the song, but 
because it didn’
t have the rights 
to it, it instead used the similar 
sounding Dvorak’
s New World 
Symphony. So not only is this 
mindless 17-word ditty about 
a family of hungry sharks the 

most popular tune of 2019, but 
kids everywhere are even hear-
ing a few unintentional sec-
onds of classical music, which 
is supposed to be beneficial for 
growing brains.
But you know how it goes: 
One good craze deserves 
another. Soon after the Family 
of Sharks made its worldwide 
splash, Baby Shark challenges 
started popping up all over the 
place. First it was the rather 
tame “challenge” of copying 
the simple dance moves that 
somehow morphed into the act 
of dancing dressed like a shark 
alongside a moving car. (Is it 
just me or does hearing about 
“challenges” like that make 
you want to invite these people 
over to tackle something really 
challenging — and, needless to 
say, infinitely safer — like your 
mountain of dirty laundry?)
Here we are enjoying the 
last few days of 2019. To put it 
another way: “It’
s the end doo 
doo doo doo…!”
Who can predict what’
s in 
store for us in the coming year, 
what’
s going to go viral and 
what’
s not?
Bring on 2020 and all its 
new crazes. 
Happy New Year! 

Rochel 
Burstyn

for starters
Sound Bite: 
Baby Shark Song

Baby Shark 

Media Matters for America, 
a nonprofit media watchdog, 
examined press coverage of 
anti-Semitism in the 11 months 
following the Tree of Life syn-
agogue massacre, the deadliest 
attack on American Jews in this 
country. 
Despite the reality of anti-Se-
mitic acts perpetuated by far-
right white supremacists as well 
as Donald Trump and other 
Republicans “weaponizing” 
charges of anti-Semitism by 
expressing outrage over com-
ments perceived as anti-Semitic 
from Democratic lawmakers, 
Media Matters’
 data has found 
that the media has focused 
more on perceived anti-Semitic 
rhetoric — particularly from 
the left — than on discussing 
anti-Semitic actions, such as 
shootings and acts of violence, 
from the right. 
Key findings include: 
• Across all media studied, 
more references to anti-Sem-
itism were attributed to the 
left — 56 percent — than to the 
right — 44 percent.
• Regardless of political attri-
bution to the reference, media 
have focused on anti-Semitic 
rhetoric far more than anti-Se-
mitic actions: 1,406 of all ref-
erences to anti-Semitism were 
about rhetoric, and 525 instanc-
es were about actions.
• Fox News accounted for 57 
percent of all anti-Semitic rhet-
oric attributed to the left, but 
even without Fox, media still 
referred to rhetoric from the left 
slightly more than anti-Semitic 
actions from the right: 37 per-
cent to 35 percent, respectively.
The full survey is available at 
mediamatters.org. 

Study: Media Covers 
anti-Semitic Rhetoric 
More than Actions

