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Oct. 10, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The limitations of scientific miracles

Caroline B. Glick: Lebanon on the brink --- and why it matters

Oct. 8, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: The day when the sane talk to themselves

Ana Veciana-Suarez: Many nonobservant Jews are finding religion

Oct. 7, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Of politics and prayer

Caroline B. Glick: The ironies of the West's collusion with the Arabs and Iran

Oct. 6, 2008

Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses

Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed

Oct. 3, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us

Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows

Oct. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment?

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news

Sept. 29, 2008

Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You

Sept. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai

Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality

Sept. 24, 2008

Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days

Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories

Sept. 23, 2008

Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!?

Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad

Sept. 22, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them?

Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam

Sept. 19, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success

Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act

Sept. 18, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction?

Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary?

Sept. 17, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS

Sept. 16, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire

Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election

Sept. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior

Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam

Sept. 11, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Sept. 10, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom

Sept. 9, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.:

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

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

Jewish World Review March 13, 2008 / 6 Adar II 5768

The Dems' Problem With Race

By Bob Tyrrell


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I, for one, shall not join the raucous mob in pursuing this unfortunate man, Eliot SpRitzer. In the 1990s, I spent quite enough time guffawing over the libidinous giddiness of a well-known elected official, and all it got me was an utterly unwarranted reputation for being puritanical and discourteous to the late 20th century's living embodiment of Abraham Lincoln. So I shall make no jokes about SpRitzer.


In passing, however, allow me to file my observation that he does not seem to be a very happy man. His treatment of past opponents and defendants suggests as much, and even the transcribed conversation of his procuress gives hints that the fallen governor of New York may want to enroll in an anger management program. The procuress, a Temeka Rachelle Lewis, reports that SpRitzer "would ask (his highly paid escort) to do things that, like, you might not think were safe." Come to think of it, he might also enroll in a course on sexual hygiene.


Both political parties seem to have sexually obsessed politicians. The Democrats have SpRitzer and Clinton (Bill, not Hillary), and the Republicans have an obscure congressman or two and the repellent Sen. Larry Craig, he being the lavatorian caught playing footsie in a Minneapolis public restroom. He refuses to resign or show any remorse whatsoever. Apparently, this is the political strategy Craig and various defendants -- the adulterous mayor of Detroit is another -- learned from President Clinton's response to the Monica Lewinsky affair. Doubtless, we shall see more of this uncivic insolence in the years ahead.


Yet, if both parties have their Casanovas, other news this week makes clear that the Democratic Party has a surprising number of racial bigots, and in high places. Geraldine Ferraro's outburst comes to mind. Moreover, the Clinton campaign's handling of it is still more evidence of the racial prejudice within the party's ranks.


Responding to Sen. Barack Obama's status as frontrunner in the Democratic nominating process, Ferraro declared, "If Obama were a white man, he would not be in this position. … He happens to be very lucky who he is." Ferraro is a Clinton supporter. She serves on the campaign's finance committee. Her indelicacy provoked top Obama adviser David Axelrod to denounce it as part of an "insidious pattern," which it assuredly is. Remember Bill Clinton's display of racial bigotry in the South Carolina primary. There he betrayed an apparently deep vein of prejudice, equating Obama's racially untroubled campaign with earlier racially obsessed campaigns waged by the race hustler Jesse Jackson. For the edification of those of us who have had to endure the Democrats' boasts to superior tolerance, Clinton was brazenly playing the race card with a constituency that was not supposed to exist in his party, the white bigots.


Ferraro, who it is now reported attributed victories by presidential candidate Jackson in 1988 to race, has refused to even acknowledge the prejudice of her statement. In fact, she has gone on to say, "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white." And she concluded sarcastically, "How's that?"


This playing to racial prejudice is not just the practice of Ferraro and Bill Clinton. Key strategists in the Clinton campaign have been quick to make race an issue in the Democratic presidential race. When Obama's people criticized Ferraro's insensitive explanation for Obama's victories, Clinton campaign manager Margaret Williams hypothesized that the criticism was raised to encourage blacks to vote for Obama in the impending Mississippi primary.


Now is this not a pretty picture, the Democratic Party torn by racial animosity? Yet it might have been predicted. Though in the 1960s the Democrats were far ahead of the Republicans in advancing civil rights and tolerance, at some point, perhaps in the 1970s, certainly in the 1980s, unscrupulous Democrats began to exploit racial divisions. In fact, they have exploited assumed racial divisions long after race was an issue in this country. They attributed poverty, crime rates and other problems to race when they were the result of family breakdown or educational disadvantages. They began to use race, and gender too for that matter, as the means by which they could get elected. In so doing, they came to need racially indignant constituencies, and now the Democrats are at each other's throats over race and gender.


Welcome to the world of identity politics. Meanwhile, over in the Republican Party, no such incendiary issues are being cultivated, and Sen. John McCain is looking more presidential by the day.

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

JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.

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