Op-Ed: Outrage Over Republican Op-Ed in L.A. Jewish Journal

Originally published in The Huffington Post

By Marc R. Stanley, Chairman of the National Jewsih Democratic Council (NJDC)

In response to a piece titled, “Dear Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin: I apologize for the Jewish vote for Obama,” I wrote a letter to the editor and a Huffington Post piece titled, “No Apologies to Coulter, Hannity, et al.”

It seems that I was not the only one who was outraged. There was not a single letter to the editor in this week's Los Angeles Jewish Journal in support of Dean Rotbart's apologetic op-ed. In fact, the newspaper was filled with letters that describe last week's opinion piece as, "fear-mongering and hate-inspired," "hateful speech," "Orwellian doublespeak," and "angry rhetoric and lies."

Here is what I wrote in a Los Angeles Jewish Journal letter to the editor this week.

Dean Rotbart's opinion piece, in which he apologizes to Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin for the Jewish vote for Barack Obama, was wildly off the mark and remarkably offensive.

Rotbart and others who share his view need to take a close look at themselves in the mirror. Do they want to continue supporting people like Ann Coulter, who said that Jews need to be "perfected," and Sean Hannity, who invited Andy Martin, an anti-Semite, as a guest on his show?

While I do not believe Rotbart to be an anti-Semite, nor do I believe that Rotbart thinks that Jews need to be perfected, I do know that the 78 percent of Jewish voters who, according to exit polling, chose the Obama-Biden ticket have no need to apologize.

You do deserve an apology for Rotbart's use of "the gathering clouds of Holocaust II" and his outright statement that the "nuclear holocaust won" in this election.

Rotbart does need to write an apology letter; he just addressed it to the wrong people.

Actually, Gilbert H. Skopp of Calabasas wrote a letter that called Rotbart's op-ed "brilliant."

I just read Dean Rotbart's brilliant tongue-in-cheek apology for the Jewish vote for Barack Obama. The tip-off, of course, was his naming of Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Mike Gallagher as deserving of an apology.

These talking heads -- with Rush Limbaugh -- have committed one of the worst of Jewish sins, i.e., malicious gossip. Rotbart even repeats some of them in his positive take on guilt by association and fear-mongering.

Unfortunately, as Rotbart points out, there are about 22 percent of Jewish voters who will look upon his opinion piece as being serious, which supports President Lincoln's observation that you can fool some of the people all of the time.

It looks like that is as close to praise as Rotbart is going to get and more than he deserves.