Search for Roy Moore's Jewish Lawyer Hones In On Montgomery Christian

When Roy Moore's wife, Kayla, bragged to the press that their "attorney is a Jew," I had my doubts. Specifically, given that she went on to say that they "fellowship" with him, I suspected that the man was actually a Christian. My money was on Messianic Jew and conservative Christian legal heavyweight Jay Sekulow.

No evidence of that, yet. But the Forward did some digging and it seems like I was one the right track. They couldn't find any Jewish lawyers who went within twenty feet of Moore. But they did find one promising candidate:

One Montgomery attorney could be our match. His name — first, middle, and last names included — was certainly very Jewish. The Old Testament names of his children were spelled in ways more typically Jewish than Christian. His specialty is business law. 

And yet. 

He’s also an active church member and a Sunday school teacher. I’m a Sunday school teacher, in a synagogue. He’s a Sunday school teacher in his church. 

This could be our — their — Jewish Attorney.

I can't think of a better way to cap this week than to find out that Roy Moore's Jewish lawyer was actually Christian.

I Think They Believe It

Here's what Mike Huckabee said about Mika Brzezinski's criticisms of his daughter and White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

"She [Huckabee Sanders] deserves better from other women and it just amazes me that even the women who say they are feminists are doing everything they can to discredit my daughter," Mike Huckabee said Wednesday evening on Fox News. "My daughter stands strong and tough and walks into that lions den of a press room every day and represents women and represents the president and represents strength in an incredible way."

Brzezinski was critiquing Sanders for providing cover to President Trump after yet another demeaning tweet towards a powerful woman (this time New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand).

I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but I'll say it again: every instinct in my body says that conservatives know that their caricature of feminism (that it means you can never criticize a woman) or their caricature of anti-racism (that it means you never criticize a person of color) is an obvious, ludicrous strawman. Of course that's not what it means. Who could think that's what it means?

And yet then we get moments like this, where Huckabee basically says "these women 'say they are feminists', and yet they're attacking another woman!" And it's like -- my goodness: I think he really believes it. I think he genuinely feels like this is hypocrisy. I think he's drunk his own kool-aid.

None of this is an excuse, of course -- a modicum of basic curiosity would establish that what feminists desire is not that nobody ever criticize women for anything. But still -- unreasonable as it is, I think it's pretty close to genuine. Mike Huckabee, and those like him, really believe that the feminist argument is that woman ought to be immune from any critique whatsoever.

Cross-Racial Representation in the House

Daily Kos Elections has an interesting post listing those House members who represent a district whose population is either majority- or plurality of a different race (e.g., a White member representing a plurality Latino district).

I was a bit surprised at the partisan diversity here. There are, for example, 30 majority- or plurality-white districts represented by a non-White member. Of those, eight are Republican (five Latinos, two Native Americans, and one African-American). There are 21 majority- or plurality-Latino districts represented by non-Latinos, of which five are Republican-represented (four Whites, one African-American).

Anyway, it's an interesting list to poke around in. Have a look.

Jones/Moore in a Nutshell

Talking Points Memo chats with churchgoers in Alabama:

In a state considered part of the Bible Belt, the allegations transformed a race into an unexpected referendum on which is better: a man accused of child molestation claims he vehemently denies or a Democrat?

For many conservative Republicans, there’s really no choice.

Sigh.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXXIX: Not Believing Dylan Farrow (Special Forward Edition)

In the Jewish Daily Forward, I have a reply to Eli Bromberg's "partial" explanation for why "Me Too" hasn't taken down Woody Allen. In brief, Bromberg attributes Allen's continued high status to antisemitism -- or rather, the fear of people being accused of antisemitism if they go after a Jewish actor being accused by a non-Jew.

My explanation, by contrast, is much more straightforward: it's misogyny, the same factor that explains the vast majority of other cases where men sexually abuse women and then don't face consequences. Woody Allen isn't the exception, he's the rule. And so we don't need a more complicated explanation for why people don't believe Dylan Farrow other than the standard one: most men don't believe most women when they make claims of sexual assault against powerful men. Any worries about "antisemitism" are entirely epiphenomenal.

This essay was originally going to be published on this blog, and in the move over to the Forward a bunch of stuff got cut. I did mention in the essay that while, contrary to popular belief, non-Jews don't really work that hard to not be antisemitic, they do

care quite a bit about portraying themselves as laboring under an oppressive cloud of Jewish scrutiny, whereby a single false move leads to banishment or worse, and where consequently attacking Jews or Jewish institutions is a brave act of rebellion rather than what it actually is — the historical norm.

In the full version, I offered a few examples to provide color: The Vatican newspaper complaining of how Jews complain "at the first shout by anyone who dares raise his voice against this barbarian invasion by an enemy race," a mere ten years after Jews were even emancipated in Rome; or the Presbyterian official who at a 2014 extolled her fellows that "Jesus wasn’t afraid to tell the Jews when they were wrong" -- as if Christianity's main historical problem vis-a-vis the Jews was the former being too reticent and taciturn towards the latter.

I also had an extended discussion of what I take to be the best analogy to the argument Bromberg wants to make: Clarence Thomas's response, in his confirmation hearings, to Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment. It is true that Black men have long been targeted by claims of sexual misconduct as a means of enforcing racist oppression. It is also true that Hill's specific allegations against Thomas were perfectly credible and deserved to believed. Finally, Thomas's declaration that he was being targeted by a "high-tech lynching" was precisely the explicit sort of appeal to racism that Allen is alleged to have made.

What was the result? Thomas' argument did seem to have an impact on some Black organizations who had vivid memories of the link between Jim Crow and claims of Black male sexual predation. But most continued to oppose his nomination. And even to the extent there was some hesitation amongst some Black people to full-throatedly support Anita Hill, it would be absurd to argue that such reticence translated into any meaningful advantage for Thomas inside the White male dominated Senate. White men have not historically needed Black people to give permission before they pass judgment on Black bodies.

Thomas's confirmation vote was 52-48, the closest margin for a Supreme Court nominee of the era. It is almost certainly the case that this margin would have been wider, not narrower, had Thomas not been Black. Put another way, there's little evidence that the Senators who voted for Thomas did so because they were afraid of being called racist. There's a lot of evidence that the Senators who voted for Thomas did so because they, like most men, trust men over the women who accuse them of sexual abuse.

And so too with Allen. Neither being Black nor being Jewish makes it harder for society to condemn you for sexual abuse. If we see Black or Jewish men who appear to be getting away with it, the primary explanation is not that we're too sensitive to the "race card" or we're fearful of being tarred with "antisemitism". The best explanation remains the normal explanation: that men, most of the time, don't believe women who make accusations of sexual assault.