Home
In this issue
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 24, 2008 / 21 Sivan 5768

Saving us from the race card

By Wesley Pruden


Printer Friendly Version
Email this article

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Somebody who looks a lot like that good-looking junior senator from Illinois is setting an ugly tone to the presidential campaign. Barack Obama may regret it.


We thought we had moved beyond what he calls "that old stuff," the use of race to divide and conquer. Mr. Obama himself, the son of mixed parentage, first posed as the transracial candidate who had transcended the divisive exploitation of race and would lead the rest of us to a happy place where lions lie down with lambs (with no speculation about what's for dinner), where rough places have all been made smooth and plain, and "Kumbaya" is the national anthem.


So who was that man who told a fundraiser in Florida the other night that John McCain and the Republicans will invoke the ghosts of Cotton Ed Smith, Theodore Bilbo, Gene Talmadge and the race-baiters of an earlier, sadder time?


"It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy," he said. "We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid. They're going to try to make you afraid of me. 'He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention that he's black?'"


Could this be the same man who earlier thrilled America with his sadder-but-wiser goodbye to the racism of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ? Could this be the same man who cast himself as the president who would once and for all seal the cracks and erase the color line in America?


So far we haven't seen any evidence that Mr. McCain or the people speaking for him are trying to make anyone afraid of Mr. Obama's race. The references to what he calls his "funny name" are the references that he himself makes, and if his middle name - "Hussein" - evokes wariness, he should blame his father for giving him that name and the radical Muslims for making most of us duck and cover when we hear a word that sounds Muslim. We're a nation of immigrants (or descendants of immigrants), after all, and we long ago became familiar with "funny names." Funny that Mr. Obama should bring up the subject.


So far race works only to the Obama advantage. His race is what makes many white Americans eager to vote for him, and several prominent black Republicans have said they might pull the lever for Mr. Obama as a gesture of racial solidarity. "I don't necessarily like his policies," says Armstrong Williams, the columnist and broadcaster. "I don't like much that he advocates, but for the first time in my life, history thrusts me to really seriously think about it. Among black conservatives, they tell me privately it would be very hard to vote against him in November."


J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman once a rising star among Republicans, says he might vote for Mr. Obama. Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, says he thinks Mr. McCain is fully qualified, but won't "necessarily" vote for him. Ed Brooke, a liberal Republican who was elected to the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts four decades ago, calls this "the most important election in our history" (presumably putting the election of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln in the shade of history), and hints that he'll vote for Mr. Obama.


The temptation for black conservatives who disagree with Mr. Obama on everything to vote for him anyway as a gesture of racial solidarity is understandable. A lot of Southern whites, thrilled that one of their own could make it to the White House for the first time since the Civil War, voted for Jimmy Carter. We've been trying to live down the shame of it since.


Mr. Obama's accusatory speech the other night in Florida sounds and smells like a pre-emptive strike. He plays the race card to save us from the race card, to make the skittish Mr. McCain wary of saying anything bad about his far-left background, to excuse the '60s bomb-throwers and radical friends and preachers from whom the presumptive Democratic nominee took sustenance in Chicago in the 20 years before he discovered to his horror that naughty things were going on upstairs. Mr. Obama is desperate to keep the national conversation away from his record, carefully hidden until now. If he has to play the race card to do it, well, stuff happens.

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.

Wesley Pruden Archives

© 2007 Wesley Pruden

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Arnold Ahlert
 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Lewis Grossberger
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Betsy Hart
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Cheri Jacobus
Jeff Jacoby
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Jim Mullen
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Byron York
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Baloo
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Kevin Siers
 Jeff Stahler
 Ed Stein
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 The Savvy Consumer
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Every Monday Matters
 Nutrition Myths
 Bookmark These
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works