Sharlet: John Derbyshire, of The National Review, on lessons for young pundits: “Almost the first thing you hear from old hands when you go into opinion journalism in the U.S. is, to put it in the precise form I first heard it: ‘Don’t f*ck with the Jews.’” Why, this Jew (Sharlet, here) did, in fact, hear just that once when offered a job — by another Jew — at a news magazine. But, as vulgar as it was then, there was a specific context (scholarship about Israel, and one Jew talking frankly to another about the politics of a Jewish employer), and an easy response (take your job and shove it, politely phrased). Derbyshire, who offers up this comment in a discussion with Jewcy’s Joey Kurtzman, is saying something else all together: He thinks he’s telling us that conservative journalists are unfairly called upon to prove their anti-anti-Semitism; but he’s actually telling us — the Jews, that is — that there’s a special conversation about us that occurs when we’re not around. Not that it’s anti-Semitic, or anything.