School of hard knocks

The people who so carelessly and glibly accuse those who are critical of some of the actions of the state of Israel of being anti-Semitic are being offered a free lesson by the school of hard knocks.

You see, even though real anti-Semitism is not as prevalent as it was two generations ago, it still exists, still needs to be treated as something evil and shocking, still needs allies who may not be Likudniks but are committed to fighting real anti-Semitism, because it really could blossom once again into the horror that it once was.

And anti-Semitism is being injected into the bloodstream of this nation’s politics by very, very powerful people. This week, Glenn Beck accused George Soros of being a Nazi collaborator who sent other Jews to the gas chambers. Is Simon Maloy of Media Matters really this naive:

After seeing Glenn Beck’s ugly series of attacks on George Soros this week, one question keeps bouncing around my head: What are we to think?

Back in June, after Beck used his radio program to promote Elizabeth Dilling’s anti-communist, and wildly anti-Semitic, harangue The Red Network, I wrote that Beck’s promotion of the book didn’t mean that he was an anti-Semite, just that he’s lazy and irresponsible. A serious person, I argued, would have read the whole book before promoting it and done a little research into the author. Beck, it seemed, had not done that, and as a consequence he exposed his listeners to the contemptible ideology of one of the most prominent American Nazis — something for which he should have apologized, but refused to do so.

But then it happened again. And again. And in the back of your mind you start wondering what the hell is going on here, because things like this just don’t happen in America. This isn’t a country where people go on TV and national radio and talk up bigots who blame Jews for collapsing economies or fomenting communism in the United States. You continue to give the benefit of the doubt, because if you don’t, what does that say about America?…

I’m still giving him the benefit of the doubt, and I still don’t think Beck is, at heart, an anti-Semite.

Michelle Goldberg documented Beck’s harangue here.

Glenn Beck isn’t particularly powerful.

But he works for someone who is.

Why are Maloy and Goldberg so slow to understand that whether Glenn Beck is or is not an anti-Semite hardly matters? Beck would be ranting on a street corner were it not for the ill-gotten wealth and power of his puppet master.

NJ Gov-elect, Sean Hannity, the neo-Nazi, and the FBI. PLUS: Sarah Palin and the John Birch Society

Max Blumenthal always has a tale worth listening to:

The trials of [radio personality Hal] Turner might not have invited any media interest had he been another lone wolf howling into the night about the swarthy evildoers supposedly destroying America. After all, white supremacists across the country are persistently prosecuted for activities ranging from criminal littering to murder. But Turner has been an insider both in the New Jersey GOP and in a controversial federal anti-terror program designed to “flush out” violent far-right plots, making him a treasure trove of information on the many prominent Republicans he has associated with over the years. These characters include Turner’s former friend Sean Hannity, who allegedly counseled him on overcoming his cocaine habit and homosexual urges, and New Jersey Governor-elect Chris Christie, whose alleged involvement with Turner may result in the first scandal of his term.

Speaking of which, Rachel talked about the merger of CPAC and the John Birch Society.

And just to show you that we must be in the End Times, Little Green Footballs says that the John Birch Society is nuts and has a picture of Sarah Palin reading the John Birch Society magazine.

Will Any Of The TradMed Sources Currently Uncritically Repeating GOP Nonsense About Pelosi…

…ever stop to notice that Fred Malek, the first prominent Republican to endorse Mitt Romney for 2012, is the same guy who pulled off the infamous “Jew count” — which led to the demotion of two Jewish employees — at the Bureau of Labor Statistics under Richard Nixon?

Then again, the traditional media largely ignored this little blot on Malek’s escutcheon when he and other persons with bigoted histories were hired by John McCain’s campaign in 2007 — even though they were in the throes of pretending that Obama’s campaign had a “Jewish problem”.

Tuesday Morning News Roundup

— Chris Steller of the Minnesota Independent notices that the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which has backed honoring the final results of the recount, has now — hard on the heels of a court decision that has dealt a mortal blow to Norm Coleman’s hopes of retaking his old Senate seat — suddenly decided that the recount was a wash and that there needs to be a do-over instead. Could this have anything to do with the PiPress’ endorsing Coleman during the campaign last year, Steller wonders?

— Ho hum, Donald Trump’s filing for bankruptcy again. This is the third time for his entertainment company.

There was an NPR program a few years ago that contrasted Trump with Richard Branson, back when they both had reality-TV programs on the air. Trump’s “The Apprentice” was a ratings hit, yet nobody watched Branson’s “The Rebel Billionaire” — people much preferred watching a piss-poor manager reward incompetent backstabbing suckups to seeing a genuine success story challenging other people to get outside their comfort zones. And really, as go TV audiences, so go the alleged “smartest guys in the room”. They all take after the Trump model and not the Branson model, even though Branson is by far the better businessman and manager of the two.

— Surprise, surprise: A handful of racists at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado got President Obama’s picture removed from the base’s commissary. Remember that Colorado Springs is also home to the US Air Force Academy, and to James Dobson’s ministry, which also with other nearby conservative Christian groups has infiltrated the Academy to such an extent that Jewish cadets have a very tough time there.

Ratzi reinstates Holocaust denier

Maybe some of the people who are so quick to yell “anti-Semitism” when one criticizes Israel’s actions will have some time left over for what appears to be genuine anti-Semitism at very high levels in the Catholic Church. Tom Kington and Jamie Doward, The Guardian:

Tension between the Vatican and Jewish groups looked set to explode yesterday after Pope Benedict XVI rehabilitated a British bishop who has claimed no Jews died in gas chambers during the second world war.

Benedict yesterday welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church Richard Williamson and three other men who were excommunicated in 1988 after being ordained without Vatican permission. The three had been appointed by breakaway French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The Vatican decree issued yesterday spoke of overcoming the “scandal of divisiveness” and seeking reconciliation with Lefebvre’s conservative order, the Society of Saint Pius X, which opposes the modernisation of Catholic doctrine.

But Jewish groups have warned the Pope that the decision could damage Catholic-Jewish relations after Williamson claimed in an interview, broadcast last week, that historical evidence “is hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler … I believe there were no gas chambers”.

Meanwhile, Richard Falk of the United Nations has invoked a parallel between the assault on the Warsaw ghetto and the assault on Gaza. Haaretz:

There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said Thursday.

Foxy Flakes

FOX News has a achieved a new low, doctoring photos of NYT reporter Jacques Steinberg and his boss Steven Reddicliffe. The way they doctored the photographs was notable, enlarging Steinberg’s nose and darkening Reddicliffe’s complexion. One might almost think they didn’t like Blacks and Jews.

Lieberman: Hagee is a Moses

Be sure not to miss the senior Senator from Connecticut’s ringing endorsement of the man who’s pressing God for a new and improved Holocaust here.

Obama Hates Jews! No, He Loves Them Too Much!

The attacks on Obama and his relationship with the Jewish community are so bizarre. Perhaps that’s because, while some progressives who should know better (such as Jeralyn Merritt and her fans) are touting them, they have their origins in right-wing smear factories such as Debbie Schlussel’s. (h/t Geekesque)

I used to think that a long Democratic primary campaign was a good thing, so long as all parties involved could be made to avoid using conservative or Republican-generated smears as weapons against their fellow Democrats. Now I’m not so sure: Hillary hasn’t elevated her positives, lowered her negatives, or otherwise realistically increased her shot at winning, but she has hurt Obama against McCain*, who in the meantime has had nearly two months to recover from his primary battles. And as a former Edwards supporter, I used to think that the extreme Obama partisans were the champions of being silly (I took one of them to task at DailyKos today for thinking that Colin Powell’s weak lip service was necessarily good for Obama, especially since $2300 of Powell’s money has gone to McCain this cycle), but the Hillary people now have them beat, sadly — if only because it’s the “sane” ones among them that are pushing this stuff.

*UPDATE: Maybe not so much — Gallup’s daily tracking poll has Obama up on McCain by 3, 46-43%, and has Hillary drawing even with McCain for the first time since mid-March. (h/t: kubla000)

In News That Should Surprise Absolutely No One

Like father, like son? (h/t Melissa Coade):

MAX Mosley, one of the most powerful men in world sport, was under pressure to resign as boss of Formula One’s governing body last night after he was exposed enjoying a Nazi-style orgy with five prostitutes.

Jewish groups condemned the behaviour of Mosley, 67, whose father, Sir Oswald, was the leader of the British Union of Fascists and a friend of Adolf Hitler.

Mr Mosley was caught on video by the News of the World with five women in an underground “torture chamber” in Chelsea, where he spent several hours allegedly indulging in sado-masochistic sex.

The Oxford-educated former barrister, who is president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), reenacted a concentration camp scene in which he played the role of both guard and inmate.

Speaking in German and brandishing a leather whip, he beat the women after allowing himself to be subjected to a humiliating inspection for lice and an interrogation in chains.

Mr Mosley, a close confidant of Bernie Ecclestone, who holds the commercial rights to Formula One, paid £2,500 cash for the sex services, the Sunday newspaper claimed.

Res ipsa loquitor.

Obama And The Jews

Jon Wiener methodically and thoroughly debunks the smear that took up valuable front-page real estate in Saturday’s edition of the New York Times.