The Jewish Question

With Martin Luther King in the crosshairs, could Jews be far behind? Now identity politics (read hatred and division) is catching up with the Chosen People who are always a target of choice when blood is in the air.

First there is an attempt by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen to link Barack Obama to his church's year-old award to Louis Farrakhan, conveniently overlooking the fact that the anti-Semite firebrand of yore is dying of cancer and professing "enlightenment," while still denouncing the kind of interracial marriage that spawned Obama as "unnatural."

Obama issued a statement distancing himself from Farrakhan that satisfied Abraham Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League, who joined other Jewish leaders in signing an open letter denouncing “hateful e-mails” directed at Obama.

Now here comes Politico with a thumb-sucking, fact-free piece headed "Jewish voters lean toward Hillary," asserting that, after years of courting it, she is "well positioned to win the Jewish vote in Nevada’s Jan. 19 caucuses and in the Jewish centers of New York, New Jersey and California on Feb. 5."

While quoting Rothman as saying about Obama, “Like many other segments of the American community, Jewish Americans see him as a unifying figure with the intellect and skill to make change,” Politico nevertheless finds enough supporters among politicians to conclude that Clinton has won "the trust of the hawkish leadership of New York’s Jewish community."

As someone who can be Googled to reveal decades-old listings as a member of the Jewish media conspiracy against America, perhaps I may be forgiven for wanting to barf at this kind of "journalism."

Joe Lieberman and Jewish Neo-Cons to the contrary, the Protocols of Zion people will have to look elsewhere for group guilt in today's politics. Those whose parents and grandparents came to this country to escape the Holocaust are not lining up to support Bush's war in the Mideast or to choose between Clinton and Obama as the best person to end it.

Enough already.

Funny Lady

Judging from the caricature illustrating her “Shenaningans” space on Politico, Anne Schroeder is an attractive young person whose blog “shifts the spotlight from the buttoned-up, straight side of politics to the fun, tawdry and light side of Washington culture.”

Today’s fun consists of accusing Paul Newman of “scare mongering” in a message to raise funds for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Newman, who is a contemporary of mine, can take care of himself, but disgust overcomes discretion in leading me to observe that, as someone who got on Nixon’s Enemies List for trying to protect the country he loves, the octogenarian actor is not a suitable subject for someone less than half his age who is an expert on the “tawdry.”

Ms. Schroeder was probably a pre-natal gleam in her father’s eye when Newman and I were criss-crossing Indiana in 1968, begging voters to help stop an insane war. If he has something to say about politics today, he has earned the right to say it without heckling from the cheap seats.