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Nov. 25, 2009
Daniel Pipes: Islamism 2.0
JWisdom.com: No God … No You! Know God, Know You! with Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (8 minutes)
Nov. 24, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran : The Atheists' unintended gift
JWisdom.com: You are a Philanthropist with Aliza Bulow (5 minutes)
Nov. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 15, 2008 / 10 Nissan 5768

The high price of a holy sneer

By Wesley Pruden


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Barack Obama's preacher troubles continue to stalk his campaign. Now it's his own preachin' that's causing him grief.


There he stood, lean, lanky and buff, as if modeling one of his $3,000 bespoke suits in a fashionable Pacific Heights salon in San Francisco, quoting party scripture and winning a full measure of nods, chuckles and cheers from what passed as the amen corner. These were his kind of folks. The rich, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, are very different from you and me. Then the party's most beautiful person dropped an aside that the beautiful people of San Francisco could appreciate:


"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania," he said, "and like a lot of small towns in the Middle West, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them." Approving nods all around, with clucks of admiration for the bravery of the man just in from safari to darkest Timbuktu, or at least Wilkes-Barre. "And it's not surprising then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."


Mr. Obama speaks of religion (if not necessarily guns) with more respect and reverence at other times and in other places. When he talks of how the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, of all people, led him to faith in Jesus, we must give his affirmation full weight, for only G-d can look into a man's heart. (We must pray that one day soon someone will lead the blasphemer and teller of malicious tales to Christ.) But such condescending sneering at the heartfelt faith of others, those who unapologetically "cling to the old rugged cross" as their Ebenezer in the storms that inevitably buffet us all, is strange, indeed, in a man who speaks of his own faith with practiced passion and eloquence.


The senator is a smart cookie, but he forgot that he's not campaigning in those easy days of yesteryear, when a pol could say one thing to flatter the grit of the God-fearing yeomen of Scranton, and say quite another in San Francisco, where a culture of sophistication and pretense rests on the twin pillars of sodomy and secularism. What happens in San Francisco definitely does not stay in San Francisco, and a careful pol knows better than to scandalize Scranton when taking the waters in San Francisco. To no one's surprise, a poll out yesterday shows Hillary Clinton regaining her 20-point lead over Barack Obama in the crucial Pennsylvania primary, now only a week away.


The Obama blooper was more about his disdain for religious faith than scorn for guns and the embittered small-town Americans who own them. Because the senator knows this well, he spent the weekend trying to divert attention from his sneer at religious faith by "clarifying" and "refining" his observation that hard times had made small-town America "bitter." The senator appears to have spent too much time in the pews at Trinity United Church, acquiring a jaundiced view of the world beyond his own. The senator concedes that his words were "poorly chosen," but a lot of voters, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, will conclude that the words he chose describe exactly what the senator actually thinks. It could be a bitter epitaph for a campaign.


Hillary continues to pound the man from Illinois, exploiting his fumble with the grim intensity of a linebacker. This fits perfectly her strategy of relentless pursuit of the theme that nice guy or not, powerful preacher or not, "Obama can't win." Shady associations on the South Side of Chicago, a far-left agenda still hidden in the shadows, a confusing life story riddled with troubling contradictions, his wide and inexplicable selection of bizarre mentors, all render him vulnerable, probably fatally, when the real hitting begins after the conventions.


The label "can't win" terrifies the best of politicians. "They can say you are a liar, a cheat, a crackpot and a licentious old man," the late Mike Monroney, a wise old senator from Oklahoma, once said, "and most politicians don't care. But if they say you can't win, you're through.

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

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