The other day, Elisabeth Bumiller, a fine reporter, used the n-word on the front page of the Times, writing of neoconservative influence on McCain. Yesterday I saw her on MSNBC, speaking about neoconservatism like it was a dirty word. And it is. Those are the folks who gave us the Iraq War. Begone.
The Times fails the political labelling test today. Its piece on Freedoms Watch says that all the big money has come from America’s third richest man, the fiery Sheldon Adelson, but has only one line or so on Adelson’s central interest, Israel. It comes deep in the story:
He also established a foundation last year to support Israel and Jewish causes and pledged $200 million to it.
This beggars Adelson’s work. As Haaretz has reported, Adelson is a close friend of Netanyahu’s, has given tons to Yad Vashem and birthright, has purchased an Israeli media outlet, and is trying to influence internal Israeli politics. He almost certainly is dead set against the peace process. Furthermore, as I and others have reported, Freedom’s Watch has a neoconservative Jewish character. Its three principals are/were Jews and it was invented at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Imagine if the Times had covered the anti-abortion movement in this country, or the anti-gay-rights movement, and suppressed the religious component of those efforts? It would have done its readers a great disservice. But it never suppressed that element; and the Christian right justly became a villain in blue-state public life. The Times owes the same favor to the Jewish right, which has bedevilled our policy in the Middle East for eons.
