Right-Wingers Discuss Jewish Opinions of Sarah Palin

David Streeter — January 7, 2010 – 10:39 am | Education | Election 2012 | Election 2008 | GOP Hypocrisies | Reproductive Rights | Republicans | Women's Issues Comments (4) Add a comment

Right-wing pundits Jennifer Rubin of Commentary magazine and former President George W. Bush’s speechwriter David Frum have gotten into a dust-up over what, exactly, repels Jewish voters away from former less-than-one term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Rubin’s article, “Why Jews Hate Palin,” appears to white-wash Palin’s background while painting American Jews as elitist snobs who frown upon Palin’s values and lifestyle. Rubin implies that this alleged view effectively disqualifies her from Jewish communal consideration at the ballot box and subjects her to exceptional levels of vitriol. The only way this will change, according to Rubin, is if Jews change their ”preferences”—presumably become conservatives— instead of Palin changing her “persona.”

Rubin writes:

Certainly, Palin’s status as an unabashed conservative and as exemplar of the Religious Right would have been sufficient to alienate the majority of American Jews. Yet if that were all, and that is plenty, Palin still would not provoke the degree of hostility with which most Jews regard her. Something else bothers them more. That something else is Palin herself.

Rubin continues on to chide American Jews for their disconnection with Palin’s background and values including:

• Palin’s supposed “intellectual modesty” which manifested itself in her infamous interview with CBS’s Katie Couric 
• Her unabashed conservatism (which Gawker has an interesting take on)
• The choices made by Palin and her family vis-a-vis her youngest child (which Frum takes serious issue with)
• Her alleged rise from modest means (which Frum refutes in his piece citing former President Bill Clinton, who was poor during his early life, yet remains very popular among American Jews)
• The way she chooses to convey her femininity, juxtaposed with former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Rubin seems to believe that because Palin did not appear as modest as Albright and Feinstein, that “Palin is the precise reverse image of an American Jewish professional woman”

But one passage of Rubin’s particularly inflamed Frum, along with JTA’s Ron Kampeas:

Palin calls herself a “hockey mom” and brags aloud about the athletic prowess of her children, while Jews are more likely to sport “My child Is an Honor Student” bumper stickers. Palin’s oldest, Track, has joined the military, while many Jews lack a family military tradition. Not for the Palins the quiet pride in good grades and good boards; the family’s esteem is tied up more in Sarah’s husband Todd Palin’s “iron dog” snowmobile racing skills.

Frum responded:

But in endorsing the fiction about Palin’s hard-scrabble origins, Rubin also endorses some not so innocent fiction about Jews as hostile aliens within America. If Jews dislike Palin, it is because they feel themselves “above” regular Americans – because disdain to work with their hands – because they do not bear their fair share of military service – because they abort Down’s syndrome babies – because they confuse mere verbal fluency with practical wisdom. (I remember that Russell Kirk once flung this accusation against American Jews – and how passionately and rightly the editors of Commentary resented it as a “bloody outrage.”)

And Kampeas responded:

Jews don’t take pride in their kids’ sports successes? Jennifer, come around Arlington one muddy, soggy weekend morning, and we’ll do a tour of the soccer fields, count the Hebrew primers tucked into bags for breaks, and match them to the red-faced, screaming parents. ... Jews under serve in the military? They do not, actually. As long as the Defense Department counted—up until the Korean War, I’ve heard—they served disproportionately; one in 16 soldiers in World War I was Jewish. Vets say their reckonings suggest the same is true today. Visit this museum, Jennifer, and apologize to the WWII dog tags scratched with Magen Davids—troops  who defiantly wore their Jewishness, against orders not to. Walk through Brooklyn and count the Jewish names on the slabs in Prospect Park, at the foot of the trees along the avenues.

Kampeas also poignantly responded to Rubin’s assertion of conflict with Jewish women:

... Rubin suggests Jewish women like frumpy better than sexy. What’s the term for this? A double whammy? An insult to the many elegant, eloquent Jewish women I have known all my life? Or an insult to collective Jewish intelligence? (“I’d vote for her, but her skirts are too tight?” Please.) Here’s the thing: A few years ago I covered a number of events around town where Jewish women, tears in their eyes, packed rooms to cheer the election of an devoutly Christian mother of five who refused to launch her career until her children were grown and who is always elegantly turned out: Nancy Pelosi.

In the conclusion of his response to Rubin, Frum wrote:

If American Jews have a problem with Palin, Rubin is right that problem 1 is that they - we - doubt her intellectual capacity for the job. But that’s only the start of the list of problems.

Ignorance is bad. But we all start ignorant. Jews - again like other people, only more so - expect their leaders to start early and to work hard to remedy their ignorance, by learning things. People who don’t, won’t or can’t learn - whose followers disparage the value or need to learn - are going to forfeit Jewish support, and not only Jewish support.

... I think the real and most fundamental problem Jews have with Palin is not her gleeful ignorance, but her willful divisiveness. More than any politician in memory, Palin seems to divide her fellow-Americans into first class and second class citizens, real Americans and not-so-real Americans. ... Jews do tend to have an intuition that when this sort of line-drawing is done, we are likely to find ourselves on the wrong side.

 

 

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