Jack & Jill Politics

It’s not that I believe in Mickey Kaus’ concept of the “undernews” which is less a viable theory about the media than it is code for Kaus’ willingness to publish unsubstantiated allegations and the latest right wing smears that land in his email inbox, but the double standard Kaus, Hannity and others hold Obama’s church to needs to be addressed.

The argument goes something like this: Trinity United’s proclamation that they are “unashamedly black” is racist and their “commitment to Africa” betrays a disloyalty to the United States. This is of course, rubbish, and there is another religion in America whose commitment to preserving their ethnic identity is tied to a physical space outside America’s borders: Judaism.

Jews reaffirm our commitment to Israel at every Shabbat service and every Seder, where the clinking of wine glasses can be heard alongside cries of “next year in Jerusalem!” But the Jewish commitment to Israel is easily understood by most as a spiritual commitment, a way of preserving Jewish identity in the diaspora. The Shema, holiest prayer in Judaism, the one that volunteer Jewish ambulance workers toiling in the rubble of the World Trade Center on 9/11 could be heard whispering to themselves as the second tower fell and they began to fear for their lives, the one we as Jews are supposed to say in the brief moments before our own deaths, is translated as “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”.

Likewise, in 2000, had any mainstream political observer suggested that Joe Lieberman’s Judaism consititued some bizarre loyalty oath to another country, they would have been immediately tagged as an anti-Semite, and with good reason. And yet Right Wing blogger Seton Motley had no objections to raising similar “concerns” about Barack Obama.

In a January 11 entry on the blog NewsBusters, Media Research Center director of communications Seton Motley questioned Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) allegiance to the United States, and suggested that a “prohibition on the Presidency … could reasonably be extended to Obama.” Motley claimed that Obama’s membership in Trinity United Church of Christ, which is predominantly African-American, “seems to stand in diametric opposition to … the oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.” Noting that Trinity United professes to “remain ‘true to our native land,’ ” Motley wrote: “Our prohibition on the Presidency for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has chosen fidelity to the United States but whose loyalties are called into question merely by the matter of his place of birth, could reasonably be extended to Obama, who had the good fortune to be born in America, but who chooses to pledge allegiance elsewhere as an article of faith.”

When people say similar things about Jews, they are called anti-Semites.

Trinity United’s commitment to Africa is a spiritual one that reaffirms the ethnic identity of most of its parishoners. It is virtually indistinguishable as a concept from the Jewish commitment to Israel, and should be viewed in the same light.

This is clear in Judaism because prayers and traditions surrounding Israel predate the creation of Israel as a country. That Trinity’s commitment is largely spiritual should be obvious simply because of the fact that Africa is not a country.

Trinity’s proclamation that they are “unashamedly black” only sounds threatening if you ignore the fact that 50 years ago being black deprived you of the same legal rights white people had. Hannity and Kaus ignore this context, presumably because they’re offended that we aren’t still ashamed of being black. The offense that they take is similar to feigned Right Wing horror at Latinos waving American flags alongside those of the Dominican Republic or Colombia, while for some reason Jews, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans can wave their flags unmolested and unaccused. The reason is pretty simple: ethnic solidarity is only okay for white people.

As for Trinity’s disavowal of “middle-classness,” this is such an innocuous knock at materialism, the idea that your financial decisions are more important than your moral decisions, that the offense taken is patently absurd.

It’s worse than absurd, it’s deliberate. Barack Obama is the only candidate whose loyalties are constantly questioned, and it has less to do with his religion or his childhood than it does with the color of his skin. Political correctness has driven such the overt admission of such prejudices out of polite conversation, but we all know what they’re really saying.