Rabbi Marc Gellman is a columnist for Newsweek and MSNBC. After Joe Lieberman lost the Connecticut Democratic primary election to Ned Lamont, he wrote a column stating that he was disappointed that Jews voted for Lamont.
His article rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning. First, he says that Lieberman got the support of “black Baptists”, “Catholic Union guys”, and all “Connecticut papers” but he doesn’t cite a source. Plus, what are these categories? Who cares if these groups unanimously supported Lieberman? Besides the fact that everyone registered as a Democrat gets to vote (not just African-American Baptists and male Catholics), the newspapers don’t get to vote.
Next, he says that Barbara Streisand caused Lamont to win. Did you know that Babs was a kingmaker? I am going to start taking voice lessons so I can pick the next Senator from my state.
It gets better. The Rabbi points out that he is a “professional Jew” – implying that there are Jewish people that are merely amateur Jews. (Or maybe some of them are semi-pro. Wait, some of them could be retired. What is a retired Jew? Someone that converted to Christianity?) Just because he is a Rabbi doesn’t mean he should understand how people vote any more than the rest of us.
Gellman says that Jews should vote for Joe because:
- He “voted the Democratic line 90 percent of the time.”
(No cite, of course.) So? It’s the Democratic Party, not the National Jewish party. In the very same paragraph, Gellman is flabbergasted that more Jews didn’t vote for Bush. Are they supposed to vote Democratic or vote for the person they like best? Make up your mind. Plus, maybe the voters think Lamont will vote the party line even more. Or maybe they don’t like the party line and want someone to lead the party instead of follow it. In any case, it doesn’t matter if Joe is a party guy or not. - Other democrats voted for the war.
First, this is Joe’s election, not the other Senators. Second, conformity is not a justification. If the voters thought the war was wrong, then they can blame Joe. He cannot claim that he was just following the party line or doing what 29 other Democratic Senators were doing. Voters don’t elect Senators to conform – they elect them to think. Third, if none of the other 29 Senators is attacked for voting for the war, then maybe Joe’s loss wasn’t only about his support of the war. - “Joe is the most famous Jewish politician of all time”.
I had to put the actual quote, because I don’t think most people would believe that Gellman would say that Jews should vote for someone because they are a famous Jew. But, he did say it – I am not paraphrasing. Paris Hilton should run for office – all blonds will vote for her because she is a famous blond. - “He is an observant Jew”.
And Lamont is defective because he isn’t an observant Jew? How is this relevant? - He ran for vice-president.
And lost. - Modesty
Good. Obviously, that was not enough. - Morality
Again, good. Again, not enough. And maybe the voters thought Lamont was moral even though he wasn’t Jewish. - Intelligent
Great. But some people don’t agree. They think voting for the war was unintelligent. - “… and he is one of us!”
Maybe the Jews that voted for Lamont thought it was more important to be American than to be Jewish. Imagine a race between a black woman and a white man. How ridiculous would I sound if I said I voted for the white man because “he is one of us”? Absurd.
But, Gellman doesn’t just insult Jewish people that didn’t vote for Lieberman; he lets us know that most of us are idiots. According to the Rabbi, there are only two “intelligent” positions on the Iraq war:
[T]hose who know we must leave eventually but do not want to embolden our enemies and weaken our friends by telling them when we will leave, and those who also know we will leave eventually and also do not want to set an arbitrary timetable, but who really, really, really want everybody to know that we will be leaving.
I think this statement is what sent me over the edge. No, wait, his next sentence is what did it for me: “Those who want to bring all the troops home by next Monday, and those who want to ‘nuke the bastards’ are both nuts.” If Gandhi was alive, he would likely want the troops to leave before Monday – and he would be nuts. The Pope? Nuts. Me? I’m nuts.
Gellman equating people that want to return the troops now to someone that wants to “nuke the bastards” is a brilliantly creative blend of a straw man argument and a false dichotomy. First, he presents these two positions in such a way to make it seem like they are opposites. They are not, the opposite of kill them all is kill no one. Not all people that want the troops to return now are pacifists (e.g. former Marine, not Congressman John Murtha). Next, since the concept that of nuke them all is absurd on its face, he makes the reader think that immediate return is absurd on its face. There is an additional layer to his false dichotomy – you either want one of the two absurd solutions, or you want one of his two “intelligent” solutions. There are other possibilities; a very real solution is to increase the number of troops to one million or more and plan to stay there for a long time. (Look at the section called The Military Alternative.)
The column ends with the Rabbi’s division of Jews into two categories. (The column isn’t that long, he just manages to pack a lot of non-sense into a small space – he is an efficient writer.) “Tribal Jews” stick with other Jews and “Cosmopolitan Jews” love “anything but Jewish.” In Gellman’s world, since all Jews fit into one of these two categories, no Jewish American ever thinks for himself – they only make decisions based on how Jewish something is. Absurd. Just like any other group, there are people that blindly follow their leaders. But I know plenty of people that think for themselves and happen to be Jewish. I don’t know anyone in Connecticut, but I have a feeling that a lot of them looked at the candidates and decided that Joe wasn’t doing the right thing. Gellman wanted Jews in Connecticut to stop thinking for themselves and simply vote for Joe because he was “one of us” – I am happy that the voters were not so banal.
