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July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 21, 2008 / 14 Adar II 5768

The masterpiece of a disaster

By Wesley Pruden


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four hours after Barack Obama's teaching moment on race, the landscape was littered with eminent pundits, lying agog in the weeds, overcome by euphoria and flummoxed by failing eupepsia.


Their squeals of praise were universally breathtaking: "It was an extraordinary moment of truth-telling." "A masterpiece!" "A profile in courage!" "Brilliant, inspiring, intellectually supple!" "Searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching and loyal." "A speech we have all been waiting for for a generation." The punditocracy, having overdosed on nuance, seared by supple and sore from all those wrenched guts, is fresh out of exclamation points, now on back order in newsrooms everywhere.


A day after that, reality intrudes. Pundits only observe. Pollsters take the first true measure of events, and yesterday the first polls taken since the speech reveal that the remarks that Obamaniacs call the greatest speech since Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address look like a disaster.


Rasmussen Reports reckons that John McCain's lead over both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is growing. Gallup reports similar findings. By Rasmussen"s reckoning, the McCain lead over Mr. Obama has grown to 49 percent to 42 percent, 51 percent to 41 percent over Hillary. Black support for Hillary has cratered, falling to 55 percent in a general election matchup. Mr. Obama keeps his overwhelming black support, as expected, but only 36 percent of white voters say they would vote for him. That's the ominous statistic; sad and bad as it may be, it's nevertheless a fact that nobody male or female, black or white or any shade in between can win the White House without a lot of white voters.


Poll numbers will fluctuate a lot between now and November; every poll is only a snapshot. Landscapes change. Barack Obama did what he had to do to distance himself from his hateful pastor and mentor, but by doing so, he brought race to the forefront of the campaign, where it is likely to stay. He has done what he set out never to do, to make himself "the black candidate." This was what Bill Clinton tried to do to him in South Carolina.


The Internet, which has been so generous to the Obama campaign with its unprecedented ability to convert message to money, now becomes the senator's Public Enemy No. 1. The videos of the Wright stuff — his calling down G-d's damnation on America, his assertion that the AIDS virus is a diabolical invention of the American government to kill all blacks, his gleeful boast that September 11 was the flutter of America's chickens coming home to roost — will continue to play 24/7, reaching viewers in a way the television networks no longer can.


Mr. Obama described himself yesterday as rattled by the turn of events. "In some ways, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit," he told CNN, "and gotten me back into remembering that, you know, the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates. As a practical matter, in terms of how this plays out demographically, I can't tell you."


Mr. Obama's rhetorical skills are unmatched by his rivals, all the more effective because a generation of Americans has never been exposed to the magic of oratory. He projects soaring tone and soothing tint that obscure what he's actually saying. His assurance that his pastor's racist rants are familiar fare in black pulpits is not reassuring at all (and it's a libel on thousands of black parsons who faithfully preach the Gospel of the Prince of Peace). His depiction of a white grandmother as a mean-spirited racist, his tolerance of harsh denunciations of whites (like his mother) from the pulpit that he has supported for 20 years with his presence and his tithes, strikes the white voters he must persuade as mean, harsh and inexplicable. This is not the message Barack Obama set out with a year ago when he caught magic in a bottle. Now the magic, and maybe his shot at the White House, resembles only a dashed wish written on the wind.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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