Six degrees of Louis Farrakhan

[ProSense]

Six degrees of Louis Farrakhan

Posted by Henry

I started to write a snarky post about this Richard Cohen article and then gave up. It’s too bad a piece to warrant flipness. Cohen finds out (he doesn’t say how, but this has been circulating around the nastier right wing websites for a little while) that a magazine associated with Barack Obama’s church in Chicago, and run by his pastor, honoured Louis Farrakhan last year. He then insists that Barack Obama immediately express his outrage.

It’s important to state right off that nothing in Obama’s record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan. Instead, as Obama’s top campaign aide, David Axelrod, points out, Obama often has said that he and his minister sometimes disagree. Farrakhan, Axelrod told me, is one of those instances. … But … given who the parishioner is, … could be the next American president. Where is his sense of outrage? … I don’t for a moment think that Obama shares Wright’s views on Farrakhan. But the rap on Obama is that he is a fog of a man. We know little about him, and, for all my admiration of him, I wonder about his mettle. … This time, though, “present” will not do.

Indeed, there’s nothing in Obama’s record to suggest he is an anti-Semite. Nor, for that matter, is there anything in Richard Cohen’s record to suggest that he gets his jollies watching Mickey Kaus blow goats. And while Farrakhan is undoubtedly a nasty piece of work, why is it Obama in particular who needs to condemn him? That Obama’s pastor has praised him doesn’t really cut it as a rationale – church leaders and spiritual mentors can believe and say a lot of bizarre shit that you don’t yourself subscribe to (as a mostly lapsed Catholic, I speak from experience on this point).

More specifically (to take a not-so-random example), Billy Graham, who made some unambiguously anti-Semitic remarks to Richard Nixon which ended up on tape, appears to have been a major figure in Hillary Clinton’s spiritual life (see also this speech made by Bill Clinton at the inauguration of Graham’s library last year). While nowhere close to Farrakhan’s league (he appears to have been a repentant and occasional anti-Semite rather than an unrepentant and consistent one), he was a direct influence on the Clintons rather than an influence-on-an-influence. I don’t recall Richard Cohen, or anyone else, muttering that there was no evidence that Hillary and Bill Clinton were anti-Semites, but that they needed to voice their outrage or else. And for good reason; any suggestion along these lines would have been treated as crazy. Knowing that Billy Graham was occasionally anti-Semitic doesn’t tell you anything about what Bill and Hillary Clinton believe.

There’s something else going on here. I strongly suspect that Barack Obama is being asked to condemn Louis Farrakhan not because there’s some bogus two-degrees-of-separation thing going on, but because Barack Obama is black, and because black politicians are supposed to condemn Louis Farrakhan before they can be trusted. This isn’t racism, but it’s an implicit double standard, under which black politicians have a higher hurdle to jump before they deserve public trust than white ones. More generally, this is a bad, wrongheaded, and even dangerous article. Richard Cohen shouldn’t have written it, and the Washington Post shouldn’t have printed it.

[ProSense]

1. Richard Cohen: Bad for the Jews

Richard Cohen: Bad for the Jews

January 15, 2008

<…>

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 counting purposes, 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 find, from 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 identified themselves as 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.

more

[H2O Man]

2. Richard Cohen

and Louis X (Farrakhan) have a lot more in common than the little which separate them.

[ProSense]

3. Agree! n/t

[ShortnFiery]

4. Kick! The truth will set us free! :-)

BTW excellent research and analysis Prosense.

When most of us talk "personalities" and "smack," you thoughtfully stick with JUST THE FACTS.

Kudos! :salute: :hi: