So I initially bought the excuse given by Ombudsman Patrick Pexton for why Jennifer Rubin didn’t update her post assuming that the Oslo attacks had been committed by Muslim extremists–that she was observing the Sabbath. Eric Alterman and Ron Kampeas did a little digging and found not only does the timing not add up, but Rubin has posted on Shabbat before. Kampeas:
A friend points out to me that Rubin filed her last post that night at 9:07 pm — 45 minutes after candle lighting. I’m not sure when Breivik’s arrest was reported, but it was certainly earlier than 7:45 PM, when Ackerman filed his post — and before even the 18 minute rabbinical girdle assigned candle-lighting.
The same friend has scoured Rubin’s archives and found Sabbath postings. I’m not so interested in that — we all make Sabbath compromises. Rubin did that Friday night with her 9:07 post about the debt deal. The point is that this does not simply wash as an excuse; Breivik’s arrest was old news by the time Rubin signed off for the night.
And making Jewish observance an excuse when it clearly is not — well, it rankles. There’s way too long a history of Jews having to take risks to observe Shabbat for it to be used as a bad faith out.
Kampeas’ point is gracefully understated. I’m not a particularly strict observer of Shabbat myself, but I took Pexton’s excuse at face value because, as critical as I’ve been of Rubin, it would not have occurred to me that she would lie about something like that–plenty of people, including myself, made the same mistake.
Rubin is one of the right’s preeminent racial reactionaries, ever eager to accuse someone of “playing the race card,” a euphemism conservatives use to imply someone is accusing their critics of bigotry in order to silence them. How utterly cynical (typical?) is it that Rubin, forced to answer for a relatively minor mistake, she suggests her critics are anti-Semites who don’t understand her religious obligations. Obligations she’s using like a teenager with a forged hall pass.
