Mondoweiss

More Evidence of Obama's Post-Racial Appeal

A month or so back I said that Obama was going to pull racists into his coalition. Today's dailykos has proof, a poster describing how his/her mother in Kentucky said she wasn't "ready for a colored man to be president," and changed her mind in the last couple of weeks, because of the war, because of Hillary: 

"Well, you know, he’s half white," she pointed out, as though that was some special revelation.  "Maybe that’s a good thing, to have someone who can see things from the point of view of black people and white people."

Identity meant more when a mountain range--or a quota, or a color ban-- separated you  from the next tribe. The world's too small for all that. And identity is evolving before our eyes. Black, white, southern, Jewish, Catholic. Just watch the kids, it's fluid...

Will Hillary's Exit Signal the End of the Jewish Establishment?

Watching Lanny Davis spin desperately for Hillary the other night on MSNBC, hearing Howard Wolfson work the same riff on NPR this morning, I wondered if the Jewish establishment is ending almost before it began. The Clintons were the greatest thing that happened to Jewish success. My people had been outsiders in American life for generations, then they came inside with a giant splash during the Clinton administration, in which 2 of 2 Supreme Court appointments were Jewish and countless political plums too, including even the president's lover (Monica) and sometime-chaperone (Evelyn Lieberman). Almost everyone was Jewish on the president's negotiating team at the disastrous Camp David, a team that acted as "Israel's lawyer" (in the words of Aaron David Miller). A couple of my extended family got to play roles in the administration, too.

Then Bush came along and, look Ma! we got to handle foreign policy.

Some of the desperation around Hillary's fall seems to me class-based, in the sense that a Jewish meritocratic group shared a sociological identity and interests: succeeding bigtime, and helping Israel while we were at it. Hillary's former strategist Mark Penn, whose millions became a symbol of the campaign's entitled feeling, was the son of a man who had sold kosher poultry (as he relates in his smart book on trends) and started out polling for Menachem Begin. That famous letter in March from big donors to Nancy Pelosi warning her not to shut the nomination process on Hillary was signed by a "cadre" of influential Jews (in the words of the Forward), the most notable being Brookings-backer Haim Saban, who supports the Israeli army (and who believes Hillary "is ten times more qualified" than Obama). Harvey Weinstein reportedly offered to help finance a Michigan primary on Hillary's behalf. The negative campaign against Obama was orchestrated in part by the devilish welterweight Sid Blumenthal. Lately Ed Koch has been working the Rev. Wright story and Lanny Davis has been working Wright and Bill Ayers too. Ann Lewis, Barney Frank's sister, was Hillary's mouthpiece at a Jewish event in March, chanting  "The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel." (A dangerous statement, if ever there was one.)

So It isn't just Hillary who has a lot to lose; establishment Jews do, too.

The Democratic base is changing. Lanny Davis recently insisted that Joe Lieberman is a "progressive Democrat" going back to civil rights days. But what does that say about the Lieberman camp in the former Democratic base; hawkish and Israel-centered, they may all defect to McCain come the general.

And speaking of civil rights, that old coalition united blacks and Jews. So maybe that's Obama's promissory note. It's the blacks' turn now!

Will Obama be as "good for the Jews" as Hillary? No. But I bet younger Jews aren't asking that selfish question. They don't feel themselves to be outsiders, and I imagine that many of them see our tragic Israel/Iraq policy, that deathly double-play combination of Pollack-to-Kristol-to-Perle, as the Jewish establishment at work. I often think of what Michael Walzer said at the Center for Jewish History last year. For 3000 years, "we governed only ourselves, as best we could... Sometimes [we were] semi-autonomous... responsible only for ourselves." Not so good, he added ruefully, at governing others. I'm looking forward to more power-sharing, in a rainbow establishment...

The World Will Play a Role in Our Election This Time

Judicial Watch is questioning an event that John McCain had in London with the Rochschilds; the law says foreign nationals are not allowed to contribute to American campaigns. Also questioned: a concert that Elton John gave for Hillary Clinton. I like this law but it's more honored in the breach these days (look at Haim Saban, who calls Israel home, running a leading Washington thinktank and giving tons to Hillary. Haaretz: "Let's go back to Israel - do you see yourself returning?" Saban: "Home? No...I could say I am contributing far more to Israel being here.")

The world's too small for the spirit of this law to be meaningful; other countries feel too great a stake in our election not to say something. Being optimistic, I feel the world's going to play a big part in the victory of Barack Obama this November. Not sure how yet; giant crowds greeting him in Europe this summer, appeals from African nations for personal interventions, weird interference in October by Osama bin Laden, maybe straw polls in Aussie...

From Montana to 'Bama-- It's Bloomberg Obama!

Obama just said on Meet the Press that he's for the Democratic nominee come November. Hillary also said she'll fight for Obama if he wins. I think this is pillow talk. When one of them loses, they're gonna be sore. The party's divided for a reason. It's the old guard vs. the new guard (and let's leave the class issues out for a second). If Hillary wins, why shouldn't Obama grasp the nettle and break with the old politics--if he's for real about all that--and run for the great smart middle that is tired of Iraq, tired of the Israeli occupation, tired of special interests, tired of being patronized and pandered to. I believe Bloomberg's endorsement is still up for grabs; a spectacular triangulation would be to sign on Mike Bloomberg as VP. Blacks and Jews, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, a third way. Yes, two members of the elite, from Illinois and New York. But remember that blue states are elite and neither of these guys has shown real contempt for ordinary people (when not pandering to SF audiences that is); and the main thing these guys would be selling is creativity, intelligence, competence, new politics, a new generation, optimism and Yes we can--fix the country. Don't you want to fix the country?

Juiced Baseball Has Come from Conspiracy Theory to Conventional Wisdom

During last night's Yankees game, broadcaster Michael Kay spoke of how the home run has been devalued and listed a bunch of reasons why there were so many now, from steroids to smaller ball parks. Also: the "tighter baseball."

Ten years ago after I watched scrawny Brady Anderson of my team, the Orioles, hit 50 home runs in a season, I went to Yankee Stadium and interviewed a bunch of players about whether the ball was juiced. Almost to a man they said it was. Mel Stottlemyre's the one guy I remember right now, and he used the concrete floor to demonstrate his point.  The ball was jumping out of the park in a way few of us had seen it do before, players and fans. I wasn't the only one who talked about the juiced ball then.

But my point is this, when I wrote it up, friends said I was indulging in a conspiracy theory. I believe MLB did a study to prove they weren't juicing the ball, cut it open, pictures in Sports Illustrated and probably the Times. Well they were; and now it's conventional wisdom. These things happen...

My Jewish Problem: We're Not Superior

I'm still caught up in Ambassador Gillerman's statement that Israel is a "far better" country than most others because it produces scientific and artistic talent. My friend Richard Witty acknowledges that this attitude is unfortunate when he hears it from guys in his shul, and he prefers people simply expressing pride in their accomplishments. True enough, but Witty is someone who actually possesses humility. This guy's an ambassador who is paid to be diplomatic and he makes these offensive comments. It causes me to reflect that I grew up with feelings of Jewish superiority, that we are better because we are smarter, and that it is an attitude whose time has passed.

The other night I was at a dinner party typical of the new establishment, half Jews, half non-Jews, and heard a gentile down the table talking excitedly about Slezkine's The Jewish Century, explaining how Jewish gifts for learning and the law had specially outfitted them for modernity. "But what is the Jewish century?" his Jewish dinner partner asked. He and I said in unison, "The last one."

In Downtown New York, Palestinian Doctor Calls for an End to Zionism

The one good thing about the nest of vipers--sorry, I mean the neoconservatives--is that their plans for Iraq and the Middle East gained blanket acceptance in the Establishment and then were emphatically discredited. Thus the neocons have served as the intellectual equivalent of the Emperor's New Clothes --and caused people to question all mainstream thinking on the issue. Opening the debate at the edges, to new ideas. Last night I heard some of those ideas at New York's Brecht forum, coming from Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian doctor and author in England, who was expelled from her home in '48.

Zionism is a "loathsome" ideology, she said. "There is nothing complicated about this... It is a settler colonizing project, and behaves like all settler colonialist projects."

The answer is to dissolve the Jewish state, she said. I'm a little blown away by her argument, so let me try and lay out her ideas in a straightforward manner.

Light, Light, Light Is Coming Into Our Lives (on Israel/Palestine)

Last night at the Brecht Forum, I heard Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism, and this morning I need to shout that There is light coming into Americans' lives on this issue. Everything I've said on this blog, about "The tide is ours," and "There will be a robust debate about this issue in America soon" is coming to pass. I feel this way because Kovel made the following points:

--He participated in a forum two weeks back in Chicago, with two other Jews, one of them Tony Karon, on Post-Zionism. 150 people were in the room, many of them young Jews. This would never have taken place two years ago.

--The campaign to commemorate the Nakba would also have been unheard of a couple years back, in American alternative culture. It is now a big deal on the left. Events in Brooklyn on May 21, at Columbia University next Monday with Nadia Abu El-Haj, lately in the New Yorker, plus "No Time to Celebrate," the Jewish campaign to recognize the Nakba. Major progress.

--A "chipping away" has taken place over a long time, with the help of the New Historians, that is finally making a difference in the discourse on Israel, Kovel proclaimed. He has done about 100 events in the last year or so, he said, and things have changed. He still gets the "catcalls" and venom from pro-Israel supporters. But it's subsided. "They more or less leave you alone. They don't know what to say, or they've gone under their flat rock." I've noticed that too. Fewer enraged deniers...

--The Establishment is fracturing before our eyes. An important discussion has begun inside the foreign policy elite about whether Israel is in our best interest. Walt and Mearsheimer was a huge event. It signalled the end of consensus in the elite. I complain all the time on this blog about the marginalization of Walt and Mearsheimer. But Kovel is saying, and I agree, that their ideas are seeping, seeping in, like water into a rock, that will break down a mountain. Believe me, soon this issue will make the mainstream media.

--The neocons are ultra-Zionists. They built the Iraq war. The debacle is also feeding this process.

The world is changing, let me say it again. Light is coming into American lives!

Bill Clinton Tells 'The Big Lie'

When I was a kid everyone talked about the Big Lie. It was what Stalin and Hitler did. You tell the people a lie so enormous that they are confused. No one could believe that someone would actually distort the truth so stupendously, so they end up believing it. They can't accept that someone would be such a liar. So it has to be true.

Yesterday Bill Clinton--whose campaign to get back to the White House released an ad that linked defeating Obama with defeating Osama--said righteously that Obama played the race card on him.

Rendell Once Praised Farrakhan--for Good Reason

Here's a youtube of a great speech. Ed Rendell, then Philadelphia mayor, now a giant supporter of Hillary Clinton, going to a black church 10 years ago and praising Minister Louis Farrakhan, who sat nearby on the dais. At that time, there had been racial unrest in the neighborhood of Gray's Ferry, and Rendell needed the Nation of Islam to help pacify the situation. Rendell said he had been warned that he was "running a great risk sharing this platform," but it did not stop him.

The greater risk, the mayor said, was not to talk about racism in America. "We know the terrible toll that racism has taken... All of us have to learn to live together."

Wow. Rev. Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, too, and was cashiered. Jimmy Carter just talked to Hamas in the same spirit. He has been marginalized and "vilified," as Ghada Karmi, an Englishwoman, said last night at the Brecht Forum. The world grows smaller by the second; yet anyone who dares to talk to our "enemies" is said by the neocon bitterenders to be softheaded and "kumbaya." Rendell is right: We have to learn to live together.