Spare Me From Tablet's Hellacious 'Sinai Awards'

Ship of fools, list of ghouls.

Tablet. (Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Tablet bills itself as “a Jewish magazine about the world.” In practice, that largely means publishing some decent Jewish-oriented arts and culture pieces that serve as a spoonful of sugar to mask the most atrocious general politics this side of Breitbart. From the grotesquely transphobic (“The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities”) to the painfully navel-gazing (“The Dune We Deserve”) and downright deranged (“The American Left’s Milošević Moment”), Tablet has carved a nice little niche for itself as the premier spot for deep thinkers whose main problem with Donald Trump is that he doesn’t use enough big words.

This week, Tablet celebrated its 15th anniversary by “saluting our heroes” with The Sinai Awards — a list of 36 people who have “made the world freer in the past few years.” As the editors note, the 36 recipients are a nod to the mystical Jewish tradition “that at all times there are 36 special people in the world; were it not for them—all of them, if even one were missing—the world would come to an end.”

So just who are these foundational pillars of human existence and freedom that Tablet has chosen to honor?

First, close your eyes and try to imagine a collection of the worst, most insufferable, most genuinely harmful public figures in the world today. People whose primary contribution to the fabric of society has been the belittlement and exploitation of others for both personal and ideological gain.

Now, take a look below at Tablet’s heroic freedom fighters. See any familiar names from your off-the-cuff list? I bet there’s at least one.