I finally caught Tim Russert’s question in the Cleveland debate Tuesday night about whether Obama would reject Louis Farrakhan’s support, a man who once called Judaism “a gutter religion.” Russert’s follow up was, ” What do you do to assure…
I’m headed into the woods. Annual Adirondacks trip for a few days. But here’s my question. Obama is leading a popular movement. This is the first real progressive political movement of my lifetime, excepting the McCarthy spasm when I was…
Obama’s meeting with 100 Cleveland Jews is taking on the same kind of resonance as Kennedy’s talk about the Pope to the Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960. Except Obama came to kiss a ring, not unkiss it! Now the…
Rosner, in Haaretz, agrees with me that the general election will at last bring a robust debate of our Israel policy: Israeli experts on American politics said in recent weeks that a campaign between Obama and McCain will place Israel…
The Asia Times is attacking Obama in a vicious way by using his anthropologist mother and pro-“blackness” wife against him. Anthropologists…proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama…
I read the New York magazine profile of Chelsea Clinton hungering for any evidence of something idealistic she believes in. No, she seems insipid, a pale copy of her parents, with a New York lifestyle. She’s on the board of…
I’ve learned a lot about Israel/Palestine from Saifedean Ammous, a Palestinian grad student at Columbia U. and a leader of the Arab Students Association there. He’s introduced me to lots of Arab students, I’ve heard him lecture at the 92d…
Yesterday Obama spoke to 100 Jews in Cleveland. The Obama campaign released this transcript, now published in the NY Sun. A few key passages: 1. Strongly hinting that he is likely to shift U.S. policy and calling on the diversity…
I always say that Jews are privileged. Well, the Pew Forum’s study of the American religious landscape shows that my people are richer, older, and more educated than other Americans by a significant factor. Consider income. According to Pew, 46…