Rolling Stone reporter EJ Dickson wrote an article on Sunday for the magazine about the rise in popularity of the Miami Jewish Boys Choir, where she said that it's "probably not a great idea to ask any of them about their opinions on Israel and Palestine."
Videos of the Miami Jewish Boys Choir have been garnering mass views on TikTok and Twitter in the past two weeks since their 2008 performance of "Yerushalayim" had gone viral.
Dickson previously made more alleged antisemitic statements about the music group on Rolling Stone's podcast Don’t Let This Flop on Wednesday last week prior to Sunday's publication of her article.
"I know enough about the Orthodox Jewish community. I do feel like one of these kids are gonna get Milkshake Duck’ed very fast," the Rolling Stone reporter said on the podcast. "It's more likely than not that some of them grew up to be anti-vaxxers who won't shake women's hands because they could possibly be menstruating. That is a very large possibility."
Dickson follows up by saying that she "prefers to ignore all this because [she] just wants to dance around to it in [her] kitchen."
"I do feel like one of these kids are gonna get Milkshake Duck’ed very fast," the Rolling Stone reporter said on the podcast. "It's more likely than not that some of them grew up to be anti-vaxxers who won't shake women's hands because they could possibly be menstruating."
EJ Dickson, Rolling Stone reporter
What does Milkshake Duck mean?
The term "Milkshake Duck" is referred to a situation where someone grasps a lot of the internet's attention, but shortly after garnering the newfound fame, "a dark or divisive facet from his past is discovered, promptly destroying the purity of the person’s reputation," as The New York Times described the term in a 2017 report.
The sheer bigotry against religious Jews is fully on display in their podcast episode on this@RollingStone @MbcStansTikTok @ChabadLubavitch pic.twitter.com/VWTHdoc2KP
— The Shy Priest (@JewishBookworm) October 3, 2022
The definition by Dictionary.com puts it more simply by saying that "a person (or thing) who becomes extremely popular on the internet for some positive reason, but as their popularity takes off and people dig into their past, they quickly become an object of outrage and hatred."
Based on Dickson's use of terminology and her article published this week on the choir, it can also be implied that what could get some of the boys (who are now at this point men) "canceled" is if they were Zionist - as she wrote that it wouldn't be recommended to know their thoughts on the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Reactions to Dickson's statements
"Based on her history, EJ Dickson clearly had an agenda when she recorded the podcast and wrote the article promoting it in a column entitled 'Mazel Tov.' What should have been a celebratory piece about the Miami Boys' Choir becoming a viral sensation turned into a discriminatory diatribe," said Liora Rez, Executive Director of the non-profit organization Stop Antisemitism.
Rolling Stone Magazine should demand more of their reporters than bias and bigotry and Dickson owes the Orthodox Jewish community an apology," she continued.
New Zionist Congress co-founder Blake Flayton tweeted responding to Dickson's antisemitic statements on the article, saying that the Rolling Stone editors "literally didn’t see a problem with it."