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MJ Rosenberg wonders:
In 2000, when Joe Lieberman ran, do you recall articles about the political views of his rabbi? I don't know who his rabbi is (that tells you something) but Orthodox rabbis are invariably very conservative on the same issues on which Democrats are very liberal. They also tend to feel strongly that Jews and non-Jews should not marry each other or even date each other. Some Orthodox rabbis will tell you that dietary laws prevent Jews and non-Jews from even having a meal together except in a kosher locale.So what. That's religion. Lieberman's politics (not his moderately liberal politics then or his conservative politics now) has nothing to do with his rabbi. Lieberman is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-feminist, all the things Orthodox rabbis tend not to be. There is a good chance Joe's rabbi is against the Iraq war (75% of Jews are) but Joe sure isn't. But, as I said, Joe's rabbi, whoever he is, was never an issue. Obama's is. Why is that?Sadly, the answer is pretty simple. The hypothetical extremism of an orthodox Rabbi is similar to the extremism of Pat Robertson, or the neoconservatives. It's a normalized extremism. Fundamentally, the bloodthirsty imperialism of Normal Podhoretz is much crazier than the Libertarian/Marxist skepticism of Noam Chomsky, but Chomsky's extremism is considered out-of-bounds, while Podhoretzs extremism has an honored place in the conversation. Imperialism is normalized in American discourse, while skepticism of American intentions and capabilities is not. Similarly, the Biblical extremism of a rabbi or a pastor is an acceptable extremism, while the racial anger of Jeremiah Wright is disallowed. Wright's comments are a huge problem for Obama. They strike at the heart of his candidacy, which has been explicitly pitched as the vehicle by which we'll get beyond exactly the sort of anger and bitterness and historical memory and accurate power analysis that Wright offers. And it will be hard for Obama to distance himself from his pastor. It was Wright, after all, who contributed the title of Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, and it is Wright who gets an admiring chapter in Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father. As Kate wrote over at the Motherblog, more and more Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim. This will be another way that Clinton, or McCain, or whoever, cement their nagging sense that Obama belongs to "the Other," and isn't one of them -- is too Muslim, or too foreign, or too post-patriotic, or simply too black.The sense around town seems to be that the odd emergence of this old video of Wright was part of a Clinton oppo dump, and that's likely correct. But it doesn't matter. Wright is a public figure, and these sorts of things will come out. It won't even help Clinton, as the last thing the superdelegates can do is give her the nomination because she was able to paint Obama as a Scary Black Man. But it can hurt Obama nevertheless. These are the tensions his campaign has to navigate: It's not easy to remake race into a unifying force, nor a ideological internationalism into an American value. Traditionally, internationalism has been used to question patriotism, and race has been used to divide. In his speeches, Obama likes to say that "I know change isn't easy." And he's right, it's not. This won't be an easy election. And whether the force of his message will overcome the pull of our history is, for now, an open question.
