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Feb
13
If you thought race was an uncomfortable issue in the Democratic presidential primary, wait ’til you get a load of what’s going on in the Democratic primary in the Memphis area’s 9th District of Tennessee, where a shockingly worded flier paints Jewish Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) as a Jesus hater.
“Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and the JEWS HATE Jesus,” blares the flier, which Cohen himself received in the mail — inducing gasps — last week.
Circulated by an African-American minister from Murfreesboro Tenn., which isn’t even in Cohen’s district, the literature encourages other black leaders in Memphis to “see to it that one and ONLY one black Christian faces this opponent of Christ and Christianity in the 2008 election.”
Cohen’s main opponent in the August 5 Democratic primary in his predominantly African-American district is Nikki Tinker, who is black. The Commercial Appeal wrote an editorial in Wednesday’s paper condemning Tinker for not speaking out against the anti-Semitic literature.
“What does Nikki Tinker think about anti-Semitic literature being circulated that might help her unseat 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen in the Democratic primary next August?” the editorial asked. “The question goes to the character of the woman who wants to represent the 9th District, and 9th District voters deserve an answer. But Tinker declined to return a phone call about the flier.”
The editorial also noted that last summer Cohen came under attack from black ministers who challenged the congressman’s support for federal hate crimes legislation to protect gay rights. The paper wrote that the “real motive” behind the ministers’ attacks was revealed later by Rev. Robert Poindexter who, according to the Commercial Appeal, said of Cohen: “He’s not black and he can’t represent me, that’s just the bottom line.”
And yet, this year, in our presidential primaries, particularly the Democratic primaries, we’re trying to tell people, young, old, men, women, black, white, and of every other categorizable detail, that not a single one of those details matters when they go to vote. Right? RIGHT?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:55 pm February 13th, 2008 in Campaigning, Congress, Elections, Politics, Religion, Social Issues, Voting
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5 Responses to “Jew not welcome opponent in political race”
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I think we need to buy a time machine for some people to emerge from the middle ages.
Jill:
This is heinous. It’s more than just in-your-face antisemitism, its raced based bigotry and Christian triumphalism all mixed up in one odious package.
As far as your last paragraph – yes, the the thing is, yes that is what we’re being TOLD but you can’t figure for what is in people’s hearts when they close the voting curtain. Public face – private face – its like the “masks” number in the musical Jekyll-Hyde. How well do we really know what lurks inside people?
I do think appealing to the better angels of our nature is a good thing. Perhaps some day the lesson will stick.
Joe – too bad we couldn’t just wipe out the Middle Ages – some pretty nasty s**t went down then too
Keith – I completely agree. And although I wouldn’t argue for or against the existence of the Bradley effect, it concerns me that in some form or another, it still is out there waiting to happen.
[...] I wrote about this race previosuly here. [...]