Well, not really. But a little. Okay, maybe a lot.
In Richard Cohen’s op-ed for the Post today, he plays a very nasty game of guilt by association. Because Barack Obama belongs to the ostensibly controversial Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago, and because the minister there, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in the pages of an in-house magazine he publishes, “heaped praise on” Louis Farakkhan, calling him a man who “truly epitomized greatness,” Obama must disavow, um, wait, who exactly? Minister Farrakhan? Reverend Wright? It’s not entirely clear from Cohen’s article.
What is clear, though, is that the there’s an effort underway to paint Barack Obama as bad for the Jews. If you’re Jewish, and perhaps even if you’re not, you’ve likely received a piece of hateful spam informing you that Obama is Muslim, or half Muslim, or 3/5 Muslim — just for determining representation, of course — or some other ill-founded crap. You know that he was also educated at a madrassa, don’t you? Well, don’t you? He’s radical. And a terrorist.
Enough. Really. I couldn’t stand it when a relative forwarded me one of these e-mails. But my relative is deeply ignorant. I’m far more outraged when someone who should know better, someone like Richard Cohen, writes a vile article that deals, if only indirectly, in similar themes.
It may be that Obama’s candidacy will prompt a moment of reckoning for the mainstream of the American Jewish community, which is far more progressive than the reactionaries, racists, and fear-mongerers who often speak for it. For example, in the most recent data that I can locate, the findings of a 2007 survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee, Jews disapprove of the Bush administration’s handling of the “campaign against terrorism” by a margin of almost 2:1, oppose “military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons” by similar numbers, and think that the Iraq war is an absolute disaster. When it comes to the domestic front, sorry, er, the Homeland, just a quarter of the Jews surveyed called themselves any flavor of conservative, only 15% are Republicans, and a minute 6% identifed “support of Israel” as the most important factor they’ll consider when choosing the next president. (You can see Glenn Greenwald’s* thoughts on all of this here.)
I don’t think you have to support Barack Obama to be a good Jew. Or a loyal Jew. Or anything else Jewish. But I do think that the time has come that you might have to oppose Richard Cohen. And all of the people like him. They are, I hate to say it, a shande far di goyim.
* I assume he’s a nice, Jewish boy. But who am I to say?
Update: In the time that it took me to contemplate whether or not I should write this post, and then how, exactly, I should write it, lots of other people have written more interesting things on the subject. For just a few examples of an emerging genre, see here, here, and here.
Update II: And now this. Yikes. Also, the third link above, to Henry at Crooked Timber, is really quite good. Worth the time, I think.
Update III: Yglesias and Sullivan have both weighed in. As has Obama. Not like that matters. The man’s a terrorist. And an anti-Semite.
44 comments
January 15, 2008 at 12:03 pm
rootless-e
Don’t forget, this is the same Richard Cohen who justified the Iraq War by citing a need for “therapeutic violence”. He should be in jail in the Hague, not writing a column.
January 15, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Obama smear campaign begins « mtippett
[…] Source: edgeofthewest.wordpress.com […]
January 15, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Jewschool » Blog Archive » I’m not saying Richard Cohen is a douchebag or anything…
[…] Oh look, it’s a whole […]
January 15, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Obama smear campaign begins « The Social Graph
[…] edgeofthewest.wordpress.com via […]
January 15, 2008 at 12:25 pm
evets
I’m an Orthodox Jew who’s been treated to the whole gamut of innuendo, viral e-mail, and whispered accusatory remarks on this issue. It was all entirely predictable. I feel I could’ve scripted the whole semi-hysterical barrage months ago. I’ve been an Edwards supporter (which already made me an outlier in my community), but this poisonous stuff has now moved me into the Obama camp. I take this stance fully confident that Obama is fine for the Jews (and even for the non-Jews) by any fair, reasonable, non-paranoid standard.
January 15, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Wu
Maybe Cohen meant Obama is not good for Joe Lieberman, and we all know what’s bad for Joe Lieberman is bad for the Jews. Don’t we?
January 15, 2008 at 12:41 pm
DB
who EXACTLY are the “reactionaries, racists, and fear-mongerers who often speak” for the Jewish community. I bet you can’t name a single one, at least in the first two categories (anti-anti-Semitism groups like the ADL do fear-monger, unfortunately), unless you’re so far Left that moderate Democrats are reactionaries.
January 15, 2008 at 12:49 pm
ari
Abraham Foxman, Marty Peretz, Richard Cohen, Alan Dershowitz. And that’s without taking even a second to think. Did you really think that would be even a little bit hard? C’mon.
January 15, 2008 at 12:54 pm
immanentize
Nothing is really Bad for the Jews until Alan Dershowitz says so. Any lottery on when that Huffpo post will happen?
January 15, 2008 at 12:55 pm
AnotherOne
I second the request for the “reactionaries, racists, and fear-mongerers who often speak” you refer to. You say they “often” speak, so it should be easy for you to name two. You have no reason to protect these horrible people by hiding their identities, right? Name names. Just two will do.
Thanks in advance!
January 15, 2008 at 12:56 pm
ari
Look two comments above yours, AnotherOne. I could add: Joe Lieberman.
January 15, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Brautigan
I’ll throw Kristol, Goldberg, Horowitz and Wolfowitz onto the pile.
January 15, 2008 at 1:19 pm
urbino
It really is striking:
how bad our major print news organs (NYT, WaPo, WSJ) have become in recent years,
that all have them have been afflicted simultaneously,
and that they all willfully continue down this path despite widespread criticism and even their own apparent recognition of the problem.
I mean, things wax and wane within such organizations, so you expect each will have its better periods and its worse. But for all of them to have cycled to Worse at the same time, it’s really quite something. Add what is now a long-term failure to self-correct despite apparent recognition of the problem, and it leaves you gobsmacked.
Honestly, I wish I could say I’m surprised by Cohen’s op-ed, but I’m not. This kind of bile has become commonplace, even in these papers. It’s what I expect from them, now; which is why I’ve stopped reading them, except to browse the reported sections just to see what they’re covering.
January 15, 2008 at 1:19 pm
evets
Dershowitz already took Obama to task for bringing in Brzeinski as an advisor (the piece may have been on HuffPost). Like Cohen, he concedes that Obama is fair-minded about Jews and Israel, fundamentally supportive etc. but claims that the association w/ Zbig (and the Carter taint that comes with it) will cast doubt on all that and is therefore a tragic mistake. Of course, it turns out that Dennis Ross (not Zbig) happens to be Obama’s middle east advisor and Zbig is a fairly marginal member of Obama’s foreign policy team. But why trouble with sober detail when hysteria will do.
January 15, 2008 at 1:20 pm
urbino
(Note to self: unstructured list tags don’t work in Edge of the West comments.)
January 15, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Guy
Amen!
January 15, 2008 at 1:23 pm
richard cohen — what a DB « monkey!
[…] Another good weigh-in HERE. […]
January 15, 2008 at 1:27 pm
bjs2008
Isn’t it a bit irresponsible to conflate the efforts to paint Obama as some Muslim Manchurian candidate–which, unless you have some info that I don’t, I don’t assume comes from the “Jewish” community you deride, as much as from the general Republican smear machine–and Cohen’s questionable guilt-by-association column. They are really two very different issues, with two very different levels of irresponsibility. One might feed into the other, but I don’t think it’s fair to hold Cohen responsible for the first.
January 15, 2008 at 1:37 pm
ari
That’s a very good point, I think, bjs2008. But I see the two strains as being part of the same disease. And that’s why I wrote: “I’m far more outraged when someone who should know better, someone like Richard Cohen, writes a vile article that deals, if only indirectly, in similar themes.” That may not be good enough for you. Indeed, it may just not be good enough. But that’s all I’ve got. Again, though, my response in no way diminishes your broader, and far more nuanced, comment.
January 15, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Grand Moff Texan
And it’s already over.
As for Cohen, who in this wide world thinks that man represents the Jews? I certainly am not of the personal acquaintance of any Jewish person who shares Cohen’s mental shallowness nor his tendency to be easily frightened.
Perhaps Cohen only has a job because his boss wants people to think that’s what Jews are like? Shameful!
.
January 15, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Grand Moff Texan
Now that your question has been so ably answered by others, it falls to me to point out who the whakos and extremists are.
The reality-based community strikes again.
.
January 15, 2008 at 2:34 pm
ari
Thanks, GMT, for stopping by.
January 15, 2008 at 3:46 pm
evets
Grand Moffti
Your point is accurate, but those Jews with the strongest Jewish identity, most closely connected to Israel and most likely consider its security when they vote, agree disproportionately with the Kristol/Commentary/ AIPAC/Marty Peretz faction. Such Jews increasingly speak for (and represent) the broader and more liberal Jewish community, whom the process of assimilation has made largely disinterested in such matters. There are exceptions (the Michael Lerners and MJ Rosenbergs) but for the most part those who are most interested speak the loudest and are quite naturally considered representative. This trend will only intensify as the Jewish community divides into a strongly affiliated (mostly religious) core and numerically superior but disinterested periphery. I almost never agree with Kristol/Peretz et al on Jewish (or other) matters, but I think the argument that they have somehow hijacked the debate from a large group of equally passionate American Jewish opponents is disingenuous. Those Jews who oppose Peretz/Kristol are generally far less knowedgeable on this set of issues (out of disinterest) and far less passionate about them. They are only mildly concerned that neocons are speaking in the name of their community, since they don’t see membership in this community as a particularly important component of their own identity.
January 15, 2008 at 3:58 pm
ari
Evets, thanks so much for both of your comments. And thanks for taking the time to drop by the blog. It’s great to have you here. Having said that, I have a few questions: First, why do you think that less religious Jews are necessarily less informed on the issues you mention above? I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just curious if you have data supporting this contention. Second, why do you think that secular/assimilated (and are those two things always linked?) Jews are necessarily less engaged with these issues? Again, I’m not trying to rebut your argument; I’m trying to see what sort of evidence you have to support it. And finally, are there numbers that allow you (or me, for that matter) to make informed judgements about both the breadth and the depth of support for certain policies in the various sectors of the American Jewish community?
January 15, 2008 at 5:58 pm
DB
“Abraham Foxman, Marty Peretz, Richard Cohen, and Alan Dershowitz” are racists and reactionaries? All liberal-to-moderate Democrats, and at least the last three (Foxman as head of the ADL doesn’t “do” partisan politics, but he’s hardly been soft on “the right”) all strong supporters of Kerry, Gore and the Clintons. So, in short, you are so far left that you think that moderate Democrats are “reactionaries.” Thanks for the clarification.
January 15, 2008 at 6:01 pm
DB
GMT, can you point to any example in which Bill Kristol, Commentary, AIPAC, and/or Marty Peretz have claimed to speak for Jews generally?
January 15, 2008 at 6:09 pm
ari
Glad to help, DB. I would note that there are plenty of racists and reactionaries in the Democratic Party. And if you think that Foxman, Peretz, Cohen, and Dershowitz are “liberal-to-moderate,” you’re not paying attention. And thanks for stopping by and for your comments.
January 15, 2008 at 6:20 pm
urbino
I just want to say this is a really good post, and you’re a really good person for posting it.
January 15, 2008 at 6:22 pm
ari
Actually, I’m a Saracen dog. A friend just told me.
January 15, 2008 at 6:25 pm
urbino
But a really good Saracen dog.
January 15, 2008 at 6:30 pm
ari
Suck-up.
January 15, 2008 at 7:27 pm
urbino
Heel.
January 15, 2008 at 8:24 pm
evets
DB –
I don’t have numbers at my fingertips but have read various demographic studies over the years that would tend to support my contentions. Also, my wife works in the Jewish communal world and is quite knowledgeable about this stuff, so I get info from her. In part I make these arguments from personal experience (admittedly a limited sample size). I don’t think secular/assimilated Jews are necessarily disinterested and/or unknowledgeable about Israel, anti-Semitism etc. A couple of generations ago that certainly wasn’t the case. But as such Jews move deeper into the American mainstream it’s only natural that their focus changes and broadens. I only wish that those in the religious Jewish community would broaden their own focus, especiallly since the Cossack is no longer at the door (in the U.S at least).
January 15, 2008 at 8:28 pm
ari
It was I who asked, evets. And thanks for answering. If you have a chance to scare up some data from your wife, I’d be very grateful.
January 16, 2008 at 7:26 am
Grand Moff Texan
ari: [waves] . Josh Marshall linked to you. Nice blog you got here. Very stylish, very pithy.
evets: I mostly agree. The phenomenon you describe is why I’m not sure what the word “Jew” means any more. The phenomenon is also not unique to American Jewish politics. The more the radicals drag policy to a position without a constituency, the more previously apolitical people will wonder why they’re paying for it.
DB: once again, everyone else beat me to it. The support of Kerry, Gore, and the Clintons is not evidence in support of your position, since they reside in the artificially-manipulated “mainstream” position (which is why the word “moderate” is meaningless), as any observer of said candidates’ meeting with AIPAC last year should have made obvious to you.
No point in your trying to play the “you must be the radical” game here. It’s no longer 2003. Are you new to the intertubes?
.
January 16, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Yippie! « The Edge of the American West
[…] Abbie Hoffman famously called Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation) a shande far di goyim. See that, Richard Cohen, you’re in good […]
January 18, 2008 at 7:15 pm
evets
t
January 18, 2008 at 7:17 pm
ari
“It’s no longer 2003.”
Best line in thread. Well played.
February 10, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Chicago
I really do not see the point, none of the politicians are for “The people” anymore, they are for their bank accounts. Think Obama or hillary cares about you? Don’t be a fool!
McCain Openly admit5s that he wants Americans to die in War against an idea That the Republicans invented (Neo-Con War On Terror).
None of them care about you, they just want your freedoms revoked!
February 27, 2008 at 2:05 am
Barack Obama: Good for the Jews. Tim Russert: Bad for the Jews. And for America. « The Edge of the American West
[…] pressure to bear on Israel to change its policies. Because most American Jews, as I’ve noted elsewhere on this blog, are far more progressive than their ostensible […]
July 1, 2008 at 12:59 am
Help Wanted: POTUS, No Experience Necessary(?) « The Edge of the American West
[…] Worse than ever for the Jews, thank you very […]
July 2, 2008 at 6:26 pm
ari
I never noticed Chicago’s comment. Hmm. How does one go about revoking freedoms, I wonder?
July 10, 2008 at 1:50 pm
waterdamage
Nothing in the near future is good for the Jews or anyone else for that matter.
September 30, 2008 at 7:36 pm
JR Moreau
This is not the first time Richard Cohen has disappointed me. As an atheist I don’t have to listen to him because he bears no relevance to anything I hold dear. As for the Jewish voters he is swaying with his irresponsible ramblings; shame on him for that.
I heard him speak at an event I volunteered at last year. He guaranteed that Mitt Romney would be the next president. A little off mark, no?