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Hey, Louis Farrakhan and Richard Cohen: You Can't Scare Me
Writing in his regular column for the Washington Post today, Richard Cohen sought to frighten me and every other Jew in America into believing that Barack Obama at worst supports, and at best tacitly approves of, the vile ideology and racialist libels that Louis Farrakhan has variously promulgated over the course of a long and serpentine career.
Having received a number of anxious emails from fellow Jews across the country, quoting from or including the entire text of the column, I can reassure Mr. Cohen that his efforts have not gone in vain. No one could argue, however, that Mr. Cohen set himself a difficult task. As a Jew, I know how easy it is to fear an anti-Semite, in particular a rabid one who, like Farrakhan, claims to have the ear of millions.
Indeed, it is as easy to fear hatred as it is to feel it; that is precisely why I refuse to be afraid. An extremist cannot flourish without the good offices of alarmists and those whom they incite to fear.
Now, I am certain that Mr. Cohen -- whose work I grew up reading and admiring in my family's hometown newspaper -- would argue that nowhere does he accuse Barack Obama of any sin worse than an ominous silence. In his column Mr. Cohen merely relates the troubling information that a magazine published by the minister of Obama's church gave an award to Louis Farrakhan, and that the same minister, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, has made a number of approving statements about Farrakhan in the past. How, Mr. Cohen appears to want to know, can Barack Obama let such perfidy pass without condemnation?
I say "appears to want to know" in part because Mr. Cohen knows perfectly well that Obama has publicly disagreed with his family minister over the subject of Farrakhan; but more than this, I believe that, in fact, what Mr. Cohen really wants to know is the same thing so many American Jews -- indeed, so many Americans -- want to know: Just how afraid should I be?
Alas for Mr. Cohen and for all of us, in the service of his own fear he resorts to employing the time-honored strategies (smear and guilt-by-association) and tactics (a false appearance of reasonableness, assumption of unproven conclusions, selective reference to facts not in evidence) employed by the very demagogues and masters of hate whom he is presumably trying to combat. Why has there been no response from the Obama camp to this deeply troubling message of hate?
Well, as it turns out, there has been a response -- at least two of them -- and Mr. Cohen even quotes them in his column. Since they interfere with his crucial business of frightening himself and the rest of Jewish America (not to mention the quotidian duty of filling one's allotment of column-inches), however, he ignores them. In so doing, Mr. Cohen resorts to a time-honored principle of propagandists of hatred: Every denial is in fact tantamount to a confession.
I grew up reading and admiring Richard Cohen's column because I grew up half an hour from Washington, in the visionary city of Columbia, Maryland, a racially and economically integrated "New City" planned, and built, to serve as a model for a new way of thinking about race in America. Columbia and the children it raised up reaped the fruit, and savored the victory, of the preceding decade's great struggle for equality and justice, which had made such a vision possible.
One of the most painful passages in Mr. Cohen's column invokes the broken promise of black-Jewish unity as embodied by the lives and deaths of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, without appearing to acknowledge that in falsely impugning Barack Obama he is damaging the only politician in America who has any hope of redeeming that promise on a national level, whose very rise to the lofty precincts of "electability" is proof that the promise is redeemed, in little ways, every single day; just as it continues to be broken, every day, by every African-American or Jew in this country who is not actively reaching out to heal the division, and to work for for justice and fairness and opportunity for everyone.
Barack Obama knows that black people and Jews need to come together to fight for all the important issues and values they share. He knows that we need to start talking from the center of our communities, and stop whispering or shouting at the extremes. As a Jew whose heritage comprises the bitter memory of racist demagoguery insufficiently denounced by the powerful, would I welcome a stout denunciation of Farrakhan by Obama? Sure I would. But that same great heritage also boasts of the most staunch and fearless struggle against the forces that seek to divide us, to set us against one another, and it's that side of my heritage that I choose to honor.
Let's all choose, Jews and African-Americans, to set fear aside, and work for a return to the days, whose memory Cohen's fear-mongering so grievously tarnishes, when we set aside everything that separated us to join together in the service of our common American good.
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There is no connection between Obama and Farrakhan, but their is a connection between Richard Cohen, Bush and PNAC. Seven years of yellow journalism tie Mr. Cohen to these anti democratic forces in our society as a leading propagandist.
Having just heard Barack Obama's speech today, I am convinced that he is inspired by god or whatever spirit it is that guides certain humans to greatness.
He is the only candidate from either party who stands with unwavering integrity, honesty and brilliance, who has the vision and god-given ability to bring us all together as a nation, to lead us to a higher place. We just have to be smart enough to let him do it.
And yet I see clearly by these remarks that the innumerable fears of the weak-minded and self-centered few can rule the day, unless we speak out against them. I want a better world for my children and his children. I have no choice.
Please America, could we for once in my lifetime recognize greatness in a leader before it dies and not after.
As long as we are kept divided, the super rich can have their way having US provide tax dollars and blood for their Crusade for Muslim Resources, insuring a perpetual war through fear and loathing.
Our MSM was heavily invested in following the Vietnam experience, by the MIC, determined to not be stopped again by showing coffins coming home and letting the voices of sanity sound off unchallenged by their own cheerleaders.
Editors are now playing gatekeeper for the investors, punishing those who would speak truth to power and rewarding those who help perpetuate the cover stories and spread the fear and loathing.
Populism is the cure for the cancer of corporate fascism.
When are Democrats going to wake up? We cannot allow this country to be ruled by Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton. Who's next? Jeb. do people understand what it means when you have the same family going in and out of the presidency? The same people that these families owe favors to come out the winners everytime, not the American people. As a former Clinto supporter, I feel very discouraged and embarassed that the supporters of Hillary Clinton are so short sighted. Hopefully something greater than them will intervene and we can stop this country being run by the same two families until it becomes a one-family run country.
There is no connection between Obama and Farrakhan other than that created by Richard Cohen's yellow journalism.
"Good points fourex. It's Richard Cohen who needs to explain his actions. His lists of slanders is quite extensive, from Gore, to war opponents, to Fitzgerald and the Libby Judge and Jury, Cohen attacks these people not with facts but with defamation and slander. Obama is now the new target for Cohen's yellow journalism."
Bravo!
When push comes to shove, people back what they know. Being Jewish means you'll support Israel before you support Palestine. When push come to shove, I don't know where Obima stands. As for Farrakhan, is his "low profile" a favor to Obima? Back room politics.... I just can't figure out where Obima got his Southern Preacher's accent, Hawaii? or perhaps acting class...
Michael, in addition to writing fiction brilliantly, you show talent for political and sociological analysis.
It saddens me that Richard Cohen's insight has dissipated to the point that he has become a weakened fear monger. I wrote to him expressing my disappointment; I am certain he will not acknowledge his illogical conclusions.
The anti-Semites and Israel haters (I personally find them to be one and the same)will no doubt use your essay as a launching pad for their usual blather, but I must thank you for your finely focused and well articulated thoughts.
I think Cohen has been playing the " Kevin Bacon Game" a bit too long. Obama has been very positive and insightful when it comes to Israel. This is from Obama (Jan 2006)
"This was a difficult time for the Israeli people ... Fortunately there seems to be a growing consensus...that seeks to disengage from certain areas that are currently controlled by Israel while maintaining vigilance against terrorist attacks is the right approach.
One of the points that I think all Israelis want to emphasize is how small and potentially vulnerable from the ground Israel is... we had the opportunity to...visit with a gentleman whose house had been hit by a Katyusha missile just recently, launched by Hezbollah (Hezbollah, the militant Islamic organization that is active in Syria and Lebanon and occasionally engages in skirmishes across the border and
obviously makes the population there feel extraordinarily vulnerable.)
The following day I went into Ramallah and to the West Bank ... you get a sense of the differences between life for Palestinians and Israelis in this region. Palestinians have to suffer through the checkpoint system, the barriers, the fenced-in wall that exists just to get to their jobs, often times to travel from north and south even within the west bank. It's created enormous hardship for them - there is high unemployment and the economy is not doing as well as it should.
Unfortunately the Palestinians, through Yasser Arafat, suffered from leadership
that seemed to be more interested in the rhetoric of Israel's destruction and
less interested in actually constructively creating a peaceful solution to the
problem and focusing on delivery of services to the Palestinian people.
And so I had a wonderful discussion with...the Palestinian people focusing on building up infrastructure, building up capacity, building up an honest, non-corrupt government, consolidating arms that are currently dispersed among a variety of militias under a single command structure of the Palestinian authority, and entering into constructive negotiations on a non-violent basis to arrive at a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
problem."
Mr. Chabon, I worked in a small bookstore when your first book came out and was blown away, I've been a fan for years and I know you are aware of your very loyal gay following (I'm not gay by the way, just a very vocal ally).
How anyone can support Obama who believes in GLBT rights is beyond me. Clinton was wrong when she downplayed the role of MLK in the civil rights act, it wouldn't have gone through without the social outcry by not just African Americans, but their white allies. LBJ knew he would be losing the vote of Southern racists for decades to come and he took the moral high ground for the party. I doubt anyone regrets that choice, it was the right thing to do.
When Obama had the opportunity to say that he would not pander to the vote of bigots by removing McClurkin from his South Carolina gospel events, he threw those ardent GLBT supporters aside. And then his comments to justify his choice were worse, from telling Gays that they can't be hermetically sealed from the faith community (You know, I know that these communities are not mutually exclusive, many gays are Christians and vice versa).
Then the campaign said that McClurkin only wanted to help "unhappy gays". Why perhaps would they be unhappy? Who could be happy growing up being taught that who they are is a sin against God, is immoral and is grounds for being outcast from your family and your community. Who the fuck could be happy about that?
No one in the Democratic Party should be accepting bigots in order to keep their votes, we shouldn't want this and as an Ally, it's one of the first reasons I can't vote for Obama.
Richard Cohen on WMD.
“The evidence he [Powell] presented to the United Nations – some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail – had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them,” Cohen wrote. “Only a fool – or possibly a Frenchman – could conclude otherwise.”
Yes Richard Cohen is the fool certainly not French.
Richard Cohen on GW Bush the candidate,
"The nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse,” Cohen wrote. “That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”
Richard Cohen has much more explaining to do than Obama,
Cohen on perjury and obstruction of justice and Iraq,
Cohen accuses special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of violating longstanding Justice Department guidelines on when to bring a case; he denounces the trial – over Libby’s lying about his role in unmasking covert CIA officer Valerie Plame – as “a mountain out of a molehill”; he asserts that there was no “underlying crime”; he even pokes fun at Americans who thought the invasion of Iraq might have been a bad idea.
There are plenty of other churches in Chicago for Obama and his family to belong to. Does he really want his children to get the message that it is OK to give tacit support to people like Farrakhan by only issuing a tepid denunciation but do nothing else? Sorry, Barack, I want a little more backbone in my President.
What? Unity with the "Schwarzes"? You must be kidding.
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