On Thursday March 7, 2019 the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning bigotry of all kinds. For such a popular policy, it is unfortunate that it represents the immense rolling failure of Democrats and liberals alike, even as they manage a facade of bipartisan unity for a moment.
The truth of the measure is that it represents a kind of compromise where the Democrats earlier in the week floated a resolution more resolutely criticizing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for her now infamous comments about Israel’s government buying political influence through lobbying arm AIPAC. Wording was changed to be more broad when nearly every Democratic politician received immense backlash for a move that their voters rightly perceived as throwing a freshman representative under the bus to preserve a failing status quo on a policy stance that no typical American citizen has any stake in.
I speak of the typical American citizen and their distance from this issue because critics of Omar, left and right, immediately decided to get as racist as possible by decrying her status as a Somali refugee as somehow abnormal and distinctly un-American. Perhaps chief among the critics at the outset of this national embarrassment was Chelsea Clinton, who on Feb. 10 made herself one of the first major figures in Democratic politics to condemn Omar’s comments, and did so in this tweet where she co-signs another post, “as an American.”
At Home in the Heartland
Now this phrasing has stuck in my craw for some time not only because of the clear acceding that she believes Omar’s comments constituted anti-Semitism, but the presumption that Chelsea Clinton is – or could ever – speak as a typical American. Especially in this case where it is quite easy to read Clinton implying that Omar or her conduct are definitionally not American.
I do not wish to simply gloss over the racism at work here. Omar is a Somali refugee who lived in Kenya for years before being approved to settle in the US. Her dad, who once trained teachers, worked as a cab driver after coming to America.
Chelsea Clinton is the child of two of the most famous political figures in modern American history, and literally a millionaire on her own accord as a children’s book author with an estimated net worth of $15 million. CNBC estimates the median American household has $11,700 saved. She was educated at and Stanford and Oxford University, the latter where she literally counter-protested anti-war activists.
Omar is a refugee. Chelsea Clinton is the heir to a historically powerful political legacy and sizable fortune – prior to her own success and that of her investor husband – who demonstrated in favor of a war she knew she would never have to die in.
It is a flagrant embarrassment that Chelsea Clinton feels entitled to opine on anything as a regular American. Compared to the actual immigrant and daughter of someone who had to drive a cab to make ends meet, Chelsea Clinton is approximately as “American” as King George III.
Egregious as it is that Clinton would make such a comment or even feel compelled to do so, she is far from the only person in Democratic politics or media who could not bring the fangs out quick enough when the opportunity arose to condemn a black, Muslim woman for stepping out of line.
Dynamic Contrast
Just look at Rep. Juan Vargas (D-CA) who earned himself a national finalist position in “saying the quiet part out loud” when he tweeted that, “questioning support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is unacceptable.” This sort of comment betrays the illusion that Omar’s critics and other centrist Democrats sought to conjure: that Omar’s comments were genuinely offensive and indicative of some failing on her part rather than a curt response decrying the power of lobbyists in D.C. Vargas’ unintentional honesty speaks to the reality that what they are really mad at Omar for doing is questioning unanimous support between Democrats and Republicans for Israel.
Perhaps that is why Vargas can talk about the shared values between the US and a state which is deporting people born there for being Filipino.
The embarrassment for the Democrats is doubled when you accept that many of the critics from the right that they are willingly bending the knee to are genuinely bad faith actors who clearly could not care about the issue of anti-Semitism outside of the fact that it has allowed them to be given handshakes and pats on the back for condemning a black, Muslim woman.
Facades, Frauds, and Firebreathing
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has pushed the Democrats to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and this week condemned them for backing away from their initial targeted condemnation in favor of a limp-wristed resolution against all bigotry.
Yet in October 2018, McCarthy was tweeting that “We cannot allow Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg to BUY this election!” Funny how we did not spend a month-long media circus culminating in symbolic denouncements of hate for this tweet- even after George Soros had a right-wing zealot attempt to deliver a pipe bomb to his mailbox!
Meghan McCain was trending for much of the day yesterday on Twitter because of a sobbing, on-air meltdown she had over Omar’s comments. She talked about her friendship with Joe Lieberman. It was awkward and uncomfortable and unwarranted, but undoubtedly the most offensive part of it was that Meghan had nothing to say about her own father spending some of his last years supporting actual neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. This is to say nothing of the fact that her own mother wound up in the news in the last few weeks for attempting to report a woman for human trafficking for having an adopted child of a different ethnicity.
Meghan had another meltdown the day after when Omar retweeted a post by The Intercept‘s Medhi Hassan which accurately describes words that her father unquestionably said, including his bizarre insistence into late public life of referring to the Vietnamese by slurs. Why any media personality or politician feels the need to court the favor of the rich, disaffected, and clearly hypocritical children of politicians is not really a mystery. It can only be described as the symptom of a terminally ill political system.
Knee-Jerks
Still, McCain’s crocodile tears pale in comparison to the more heinous activities of other right-wing media figures. Here’s Bethany S. Mandel, a writer for The Federalist – a right-wing magazine literally operated by Meghan McCain’s husband, Ben Domenech – claiming Omar’s comments echoed another infamous political figure in America.
What she is referencing is President Trump’s words in response to the Charlottesville demonstrations where white supremacists of all stripes gathered in the streets to chant “Jews will not replace us” before James Fields’ premeditated attack by vehicle on activists led to the death of Heather Heyer. What she means to say is that Democrats not explicitly-but-instead-implicitly singling out Omar – who said and did nothing wrong, to be sure – is the same as actual terrorist violence.
Mandel’s opinion can only honestly be described as racist in the extreme, so it fits with the rest of her writing. Such as this piece where she laments how her previous article about befriending Nazis got her resoundingly shamed and embarrassed for the better part of a year. The article on befriending Nazis even opens with the quote, “What I’m about to suggest in this column is not something I’m sure I have the moral fortitude to carry out in my own life.” Written in response to the Charlottesville attack, it is clear she has never had any intention of the article or argument being taken seriously, she merely wanted to posit that other people’s more direct approach to confronting white supremacy was both misguided and morally beneath her. Again, rather suspicious that the woman who wrote a column about the positives of befriending Nazis – despite openly admitting she had no intention of doing so – in the wake of them killing a non-violent protestor is now deathly worried of open anti-Semitism when she can talk down to a black, Muslim woman.
Just in case you were wondering, Meghan McCain’s husband wrote for The Federalist in the wake of Charlottesville that the real problem was unchecked left-wing violence at protests such as the one where Heather Heyer was murdered by a Nazi. In the piece, he laments that “the right’s elites in media and politics are rushing to concede this battle before it is even joined.” Wouldn’t want to over-react now would we?
At last, bipartisanship.
To be clear, while the conservative response to Omar’s comments has been nothing shy of explicitly islamophobic and blatantly hypocritical in nature, Democrats and media liberals alternately tepid-and-condescending or suspiciously eager condemnations should be equally dispiriting.
Batya Ungar-Sargon, opinion editor at The Forward and the person Chelsea Clinton now infamously co-signed, tweeted on Feb. 11 a backhanded congratulations for Omar for winning “the approval of the KKK” as infamous white supremacist David Duke chimed in with his own virulent anti-Semitism. It’s a transparently grotesque comment that involves taking a known white supremacist at his word when using the situation to spread actual anti-Semitic tropes – and again, steeped in the racism of false equivalency – so why would anyone assume she is operating from a place of genuine concern?
Or why would anyone assume genuine concern on the part of a journalist like Julia Ioffe who also could not help herself from getting outright racist about Omar by implying that she has not condemned nations such as Saudi Arabia- clear evidence to Ioffe that Omar is playing favorites and motivated by latent or intentional anti-Semitism. Just look at this exchange with a now-deleted tweet where Ioffe demonstrates just how lazy she is prepared to be while supposedly denouncing comments that she claims scare Jewish people, both liberal and conservative alike:
That Omar has repeatedly publicly condemned a nation like Saudi Arabia to the extent that she has discussed boycotting Hajj – among other facets of a boycott, divest, and sanction-based policy toward Saudi Arabia – did not matter to Ioffe. And why would it? Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic where Ioffe worked in 2017, was literally an Israeli prison guard of a camp set up to detain Palestinian rebels during the First Intifada.
So unfortunately, yes, people were right to say that Omar was wrong when she posited that AIPAC is primarily responsible for creating the bipartisan consensus that Israel is above reproach. She was wrong because unquestioning support for Israel’s policies is not simply bought via campaign dollars and lucrative networking opportunities, it is created by a media environment where a magazine edited by a former prison guard of Palestinian dissidents is considered “objective” by some readers when talking about this issue.
Really? Rahm?
Consider for example, that Rahm Emanuel of all people got space in The Atlantic this week to share his thoughts on Omar’s supposed anti-Semitism.
Yes, that same Rahm Emanuel recusing himself from Chicago’s mayor’s office after it became public knowledge that he assisted in delaying the release of footage of a now-convicted police officer murdering a black teenager so he could narrowly win his last re-election. Emanuel seriously posits that he is coming to the defense of Omar in the piece while ignoring things like mass deportations by Israel, the status of Palestinians in the state, or that representatives like Omar or fellow Muslim congresswoman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) have been public about receiving constant death threats since their election.
It should be noted, Emanuel got his start in politics as a member of one of the first campaigns to ever target an incumbent for not being pro-Israel enough.
Maybe the only people who thought he should be given space to make jokes like, “And Israeli women can drive—just as badly as the rest of the population,” was the editorial staff of The Atlantic.
Radically Disappointing
The more radical left-wing part of the Democratic party should also not escape criticism for its own failures to support Omar. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), rising Democratic star who has clearly caught the attention of the press for her profile ascending beyond the need for strict party loyalty, offered bland critique by saying that all bigotry serves the same ends, after observing that the backlash to Omar doesn’t seem to occur when blatantly racist statements are made about Latin-x communities.
There’s no defense of Omar to be seen here. Hardly even an acknowledgment that critics of her are behaving in absurdly cruel and unfair ways by even the most generous standards. Ocasio-Cortez’s response to critics of her own non-response was to fire back on a left that she claims was once comfortable to finger-wag and make cynical assumptions.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) took until this week to voice his support of Omar, at least describing her words as “legitimate criticism,” but it remains curious why it took until the eve of the House Democrats nearly condemning her by name in a resolution – until the Congressional Black Caucus objected – for him to risk public support.
This cowardice in the face of manufactured outrage that Sanders claims is intended to stifle criticism is baffling. It has led to bizarre configurations of political alignment in which Geraldo Rivera is more outspoken in the defense of Omar than her own party colleagues, because he is unafraid to acknowledge the basic truthfulness of what she said.
Amid Ocasio-Cortez’s hand-wringing response there is at least one resoundingly true statement however: telling others how to feel about racism will typically get you nowhere. Perhaps then she will heed the words of Jewish Voice for Peace board-member Phyllis Bennis who wrote in The Nation on March 5, “Attacks on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar are rising. One of the first Muslim women elected, Omar is also black, an African immigrant, a former refugee from Somalia, and wears her hijab in the halls of Congress. She is under attack from the leaders of her own party for anti-Semitic statements she never made, for anti-Jewish prejudice she never expressed, for hatred of Jews she doesn’t hold.”
I can not imagine the frustration of people like Bennis who can so clearly articulate what is at stake when even Omar’s own party refuses to defend her from the glaringly bad faith attempts to shame a black, Muslim woman in the fraudulent defense of people like Bennis herself. Thanks to the concise words of former Gawker editor Alex Pareene though, there is at least one way to understand this entire catastrophe.
Kyle is a four-letter word 