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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: "Jew-Baiting" (ANDREW SULLIVAN ATTACKED FOR ATTACKING KRISTOL) "Jew-Baiting" 19 Apr 2008 08:27 pm Attacks from within families are always more hurtful than those from the outside, and so I cannot pretend that Leon Wieseltier's latest personal attack on yours truly isn't painful in the extreme. To be called a "Jew-baiter" in the pages of a magazine I was once proud and honored to edit, and which I love and support, is an extremely wounding blow. It is also untrue and unfair. Here's why Leon accused me of such a thing. I was outraged last week when Bill Kristol publicly called Obama a liar about his own Christian faith. The reason I was outraged is because accusing someone else's sincere profession of faith a fraud is about as nasty a tactic as one can imagine, about as brutal an attack on someone's integrity as can be devised. It will be part of the neocon right's attack on Obama this summer and fall. Obama's Christianity - modern, moderate, inclusive, non-fundamentalist, African-American - is terribly threatening to the Republican strategy of defining Christianity as exclusively fundamentalist and heartland, and rallying voters to the polls on those grounds. If the Democrat is obviously a faithful and observant Christian, and not a Christianist, this strategy might come undone, their polarization made less potent, and their cooptation of religion as a political tool less effective. So accusing Obama of being a Marxist, and a liar, and a spiritual fraud, is critical to the success of the strategy. I think this is gutter politics, disrespectful, uncivil and, in Kristol's case, a function of total cynicism and bad faith. My phrase "a non-Christian manipulator of Christianity" is an attack on Kristol's cynicism, not his Jewishness. I agree wholeheartedly with Leon that, "if Kristol is wrong about Obama, it is not because Kristol is a Jew." It is because he is a cynic about faith, and a ruthless partisan indifferent to the truth when it cannot be harnessed to the wielding of power. My post was a protest against the manipulation of faith for partisan purposes, a theme that readers know I have been concerned with for a long time, and is the core argument of my recent book. It would apply to anyone outside a faith who has decided to use and manipulate another's faith for his own political purposes. "Non-Christian" would include atheist or Muslim or agnostic or, of course, Jewish. It would apply to my calling a professing Muslim a fraud or a practising Protestant a liar. It seems to me that in these areas of deeply personal conviction, a man's statement of his own faith - especially when it has been elaborated and explained by Obama in such detail - should be given the benefit of the doubt. And that should be particularly true for those who are not part of the same faith community. When you read the post (which TNR does not link to) this is clear. Here's the full context: If I were "Jew-baiting," what would the "they" in that following sentence refer to: Jews? Please. The phrase is obviously a reference to Republicans, especially the most cynical, Rovian variety, which Kristol epitomizes. One reader emailed me to say that he thought the phrase could be interpreted as anti-Semitic, and, to be honest, it was the first time it occurred to me. All I can say is that is not in any way what I intended, the context makes this obvious, and if someone were to take it that way, I am sincerely, deeply sorry for not being clearer. I find anti-Semitism one of the vilest, ugliest, dumbest pathologies of the human mind and soul, and I don't think any fair reader of my work over the years could come to any other conclusion. I guess I assume that after years of writing - Leon would call it "typing" - and literally millions of words, readers will know full well where my heart is on this matter. I guess I assume that the editors of The New Republic would know that too. The origins of Leon's personal hatred of yours truly are too tedious to recount, but they go back a very long way, and Wieseltier is a connoisseur and cultivator of personal hatred. I do think, however, that when accusing someone of "Jew-baiting," a writer might be a little more careful in his own use of language. I am 44 years old, a former editor of the magazine Wieseltier works for, married, and adult. And yet this is the tone of Leon's scorn: "Nice little blog you have there, Obama boy." Little? Boy? African-Americans and gay men have had one thing in common over the decades and centuries. When we are being put in our place by our superiors, we are called "boys." What do you call an openly gay man who actually manages to have a career in mainstream journalism? A boy. Obama is not a boy, and neither am I. And breaking through those barriers is one thing this election has come to be about.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 11.
#11. To: aristeides (#0)
Is to be called nothing as it means nothing. "Jew-baiter", "Jew Hater", "Anti-semite"? Meaningless terms slung about by professional victims and sorry assed weakling Zionist Jews who have no shame or self respect. Talk about living up to stereotypes! Dooofus Nerdy weakling Jews hiding behind Teacher's skirt. Ugghh. I would kill myself if I had so little self respect.
#12. To: Burkeman1 (#11)
Nicely said - thank you.
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