Thursday, May 14, 2009

That One

Arkansas GOP Senate candidate Kim Hedren refers to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as "that Jew".

Apology #1: He didn't have his teleprompter, and screwed up in trying to explain how he, unlike Schumer, believes in "traditional values". Which generally have been defined to the complete exclusion of Jewish perspectives anyway (that's my addition).

Apology #2: When I referred to him as Jewish, it wasn't because I don't like Jewish people [of course not! --DS] ... I shouldn't have gotten into this Jewish business because it distracts from the issue."

UPDATE: Going off of what PG said in the comments, this isn't the first time Jewishness seemed to be juxtaposed with Schumer.
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2 comments:

PG said...

I don't think I had articulated the thought that Schumer is Jewish until recently. Unless there's something that specifically identifies someone as Jewish (e.g. the excitement in 2000 about Lieberman's being the first Jew on a major party presidential ticket), I tend to lump all pale-skinned Americans into "white" and not divide them up beyond that. (I didn't really specifically think 'Hey, that guy's a Jew' about Seinfeld until the last season.) But with Schumer, somehow it seems to be coming up a lot lately -- and nothing to do with Israel or something where it would make sense to refer to his being Jewish, but more to do with the financial crisis. I feel like people, especially his opponents, are adverting to Schumer's Jewishness much more now than they used to do.

1:18 PM
David Schraub said...

I don't think it's that bizarre that "Jew" would come up with "financial crisis", given the history of how anti-Semitism has operationalized.

3:25 PM

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