Is Heidi Klum a Nazi ‘Project Runway’ Host?

Tablet Magazine doesn’t often focus on Heidi Klum—she hasn’t renamed herself Miriam to join the celeb Kabbalah crew or made her position known on the prompt shuttering of Brighton Beach Memoirs. But a blogger at the Forward has overcome that problem, observing today that in Klum’s role as Project Runway host, she relishes announcing the fate of contestants who are “‘eliminated’ (eliminated!).” See, the Nazis eliminated people too, and they were German, just like Klum, so therefore there’s some sort of Nazi aura encircling Klum, and the blogger, Rebecca Honig Friedman, taking Jewish paranoia to ridiculously childish heights, has a hard time with that projected aura. In fact, confesses Friedman (whom we’ve met, and who seems a reasonable, nice gal), whenever Klum “announces to the panel of quaking designers, in her German accent, ‘One of you will be in, and one of you will be out,’ either my husband or I will mock, in our own fake German accents, ‘One of you will go to the right, and one of you will go to the left.’” (That joke has got to be stale by now—Project Runway is currently in its sixth season). Furthermore, Friedman notes, Klum doesn’t say “please” to the competitors—unlike the sultrier Padma Lakshmi on Top Chef, giving proof of her lack of compassion, obvs a Nazi trait. Sure, Friedman acknowledges she’s making a leap—but, hey, a leap never stopped a person from comparing supermodels to fascists, or from indulging in stereotypes, or from revealing how a sense of victimhood can color something as addictive and inane as a reality show.

We’ll leave the charges that Friedman’s post is racist to her commenters.

‘In or Out’: Why Heidi Klum Makes Me Nervous [Forward]