Kaplan just hired yet another neocon, Jennifer Rubin of Commentary, who will blog for the site. For my money, this bizarre….I don’t if the right description is self-hating or what… Rubin piece about why Jewish Americans don’t like Sarah Palin is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read:
Popular Jewish and non-Jewish female politicians—from Senator Diane Feinstein to Madeleine Albright to Hillary Clinton—have been modest to the point of frumpiness in appearance and professional in style, and therefore perfectly acceptable to Jewish women who aspired to similar positions of responsibility. Palin was another story, even if the story was in large part fictional.
Paul in KY
How can she be a Neocon if she doesn’t like Sarah! ™? Sarah! loves Israel & smiting brown people. What gives?
Edit: Time to leave work. Will respond tomorrow to any comments.
Poopyman
But what does Pammy think?
geg6
WTF? Seriously? Jewish women only like ugly, frumpy shiksas? Hm. Gonna have to go ask my female Jewish co-worker about this.
Southern Beale
And man that Golda Meir had a face like a hatchet.
/sarcasm
Jeebus our discourse just gets stupider and stupider
Djur
Jennifer Rubin makes Bill Kristol look like Edward Said.
El Cid
So, if Sarah Palin was just as dumb, insulting, condescending, proud of her own ignorance, grifting, lying, incompetent, and quitting at her elected position as governor, then a frumpy appearance and restrained style would have won the Jewish vote?
daveNYC
Yeah, nothing to do with the fact that most Jews are liberal and Sarah is about as nutbar conservative as you can get. It’s gotta be how she looks.
Betty Cracker
Wow, that is monumentally stupid and, yeah, chock-full of stupid stereotypes.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I was about to say “Wow, there’s an entire culture that hates showboating idiots, I should become a Jew” and then I remembered Joe Liberman.
Steve
Somehow, it couldn’t be that Adelman has a negative perception of Palin’s competence or intelligence. There obviously has to be something Jewy about his dislike!
Tax Analyst
@El Cid:
Maybe, but she could forget the Mark Levin/Starbursts crowd.
david mizner
Oh, yeah, her.
She’s the person who flipped out and caused Joe Klein (Joe Klein!) an anti-semite because he had the temerity to point out that some PNACers wanted to go to war with Iraq to protect Israel.
Suck It Up!
I cannot wait for the day that I see this on the Internet:
“Whatever happened to Sarah Palin?”
Napoleon
I just want to mention Natalie Portman from Star Wars as a counter example.
me
WaPo didn’t have enough pundits calling for the invasion of Iran.
david mizner
Holy Shit. Just clicked over to that piece, which looks to be 3000 words or so. I managed to stop myself from reading it, saving 20 minutes of my life, which I’ll now use to write to vapid blog comments.
MikeJ
Does she realize that polls show that pretty much all women, not just Jews, hate Sarah Palin?
Sputnik_Sweetheart
Being a Jewish woman, I was going to make a rebuttal to this, but it is just so stupid I’m not even going to waste brain cells on it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Napoleon: Lauren Bacall.
Linda Featheringill
According to the article, Jews are shallow and judgmental, as well as too lazy to investigate before forming an opinion.
Hmmm. That is different from the usual stuff thrown at them.
Poopyman
@david mizner: A wise choice.
I didn’t read it either, but writing vapid comments is clearly a better use of the time. See? Here’s one now.
David
Wouldn’t it be just as reasonable to conclude that Jewish women can get past the looks thing better than the general population and if Sarah Palin had anything going on upstairs she’d be particularly popular among Jewish women?
Nylund
I recently talked about the Jewish community’s view of Palin with two close friends. One friend is a Cheney-loving super-conservative. Another knocked door to door for Obama in swing states. These two can’t agree on anything.
But, when it comes to Palin (and the Christian Conservative movement), they have the same opinion. The pro-Israel Jesus crowd scares the crap out of both of them. Both friends from opposite sides of the spectrum think that Palin et al. only support Israel out of the hope that it will hasten the coming of the Rapture (which, of course, involves the destruction of the Middle East and all the Jews ending up in Hell).
Typically, if someone’s desired outcome is for your country to be devoured by war and for you to burn for all eternity in a lake of fire, they’re not your friend, no matter how much support and friendship they claim to give.
Steve
@Linda Featheringill: But this is pretty typical schtick for a conservative Jew talking about liberal Jews!
Silver Owl
Jennifer Rubin loves Palin because of her pumps, glasses or skirts? Other than the clothes what else could there possibily for Rubin to even notice. lol
guster
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Instead of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, Jews have Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman.
I can’t even count how many ways that’s stupid.
“Popular Jewish and non-Jewish female politicians.”
AKA ‘Popular female politicians.”
“from Senator Diane Feinstein to Madeleine Albright to Hillary Clinton”
Unlike all the popular conservative Jewish woman politicians–hey, there’s that fuckhead in FL, she’s popular!
“have been modest to the point of frumpiness in appearance”
Because Clinton is a dog: http://abagond.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/hillaryclinton.jpg
“and professional in style”
_Politicians_ with a professional style? Get _out_!
“and therefore perfectly acceptable to Jewish women who aspired to similar positions of responsibility.”
Similar to Senator and Ambassador?
“Palin was another story, even if the story was in large part fictional.”
That’s so stupid that my foreskin just grew back in protest.
I don’t wanna get all Jewy, but one thing you usually _can_ say about Jewish women is, they’re not fucking stupid.
Dan
Has the Post passed USA Today yet for lowest reading level required to read the paper?
I think my kindergarten teacher would’ve given that palin article a “Needs lots of work”
DougJ
@Nylund:
I don’t think this is complicated: Jewish culture does not respect stupidity. Unfortunately, much of Real Murkin culture does.
Ash Can
I skimmed the article, and the article as a whole is even goofier than the excerpt. Rubin starts with the question of why American Jews don’t like Sarah Palin. She proceeds to go through an entire laundry list of everything that’s wrong with Palin, every reason no one in their right mind would consider her principled, competent, or in any way fit for public office. Then she says, “but there has to be something more to explain the level of hostility toward her.” Hence, she decides, it must be her appearance — never mind the fact that she’s just given more than enough reasons to despise Palin.
I get the impression that she finally settles on this ridiculous and petty conclusion because she’s actually bending over backwards to show that American Jews ultimately have no good reason to despise Palin at all. Otherwise she’d stop four-fifths of the way through the article and say, “And that’s why American Jews don’t like Palin. Any questions?”
beltane
Let’s see, a frumpy version of Sarah Palin would be Sharron Angle, who was also probably not terribly popular with Jewish voters. What would Ms. Rubin’s explanation for this be?
Poopyman
@guster:
I just sprayed my keyboard with Coke. Thanks a lot.
Pammy Atlas’ Jugs. (Just my warning not to generalize.)
JCT
@Nylund:
+1 to this, yes, many Jews are not fooled by the “Pro-Israel” position of these guys.
Also, one of the central tenets of Judiasm is the importance of education and intellectual discourse. I’m sorry, if there is a bigger anti-particle to those basic concepts than Sarah Palin I just don’t know.
Really, how stupid is this?
trollhattan
@guster:
Yeah, why not throw the door the rest of the way open and make it “popular and unpopular Jewish and non-Jewish female politicians”? Or better still, “popular and unpopular Jewish and non-Jewish female and male politicians and those not engaged in politics”?
I understand the figure is up to 6.7 billion.
Bulworth
I thought it was about time someone got us back to the important matters of “style” and other personality-centric matters in our politics.
Cris
I wonder what Fran Drescher thinks of Sarah Palin.
Chyron HR
Of course, they hate Palin because she’s rainbow high. She hasn’t learned the lines they’d like to hear also, too.
guster
@Poopyman: I’ve got one of those in my family. I mean a Jugs, not a foreskin. (Far as I know, there are none of _those_ in my family.) Freaks me out completely–but that’s why I had to mention the FL fuckhead and say ‘usually.’ We’ve also got Richard Perle and smarmy neocon bastard whose name I’ve finally managed to repress.
scav
Couldn’t somebody write a 15-verse long song about why Jewish women might not like the Divine Northern Grifter, each verse ending with Dayenu? Might even go long . .
Davis X. Machina
@Suck It Up!: Six weeks after she announces, you’ll get your wish.
Mark your calendar — +50% unfavorables and 100% name recognition doesn’t leave a lot of upside potential.
Poopyman
@guster: Dude! Have a Happy Thanksgiving visiting all your family!
licensed to kill time
@guster:
Good gawd guster! I am completely covered in dust bunnies now from the total ROFL meltdown.
Linda Featheringill
@guster:
LOL!
Give this man a prize!
[still chuckling]
david mizner
@DougJ:
Please don’t flatter us. Jews don’t particularly mind stupidity or non-frumpiness.
If I have to answer this question, I’d says Jews don’t like Palin it’s because she’s not merely conservative and Christian but traffics in a kind of Buchananite conservative populism that gives of the stench of Nazism.
Don’t mistake her for an “American greatness” neo-con. She just endorsed Tancredo over the GOP candidate.
Mustang Bobby
Way to grossly generalize all Jewish women there, Jennifer. Add that to your life list of black people have rhythm, Irish are drunks, and gays are child molesters.
Sly
@Nylund:
True enough. Even Israeli hawks who have surface ties to the Christian Right treat them more as useful idiots than anything else. I think it was Menachem Begin who famously quipped, when asked about Christian fundamentalists’ “support” for Israel being wrapped up in the their desire to see the apocalypse realized, “If the Messiah comes, we’ll just ask him if he’s been here before.”
Linda Featheringill
Am female but not Jewish. I also really dislike Palin. Yeah, she looks cute in her fancy pumps but I really think that the woman devours everyone around her.
This is me, running the other way.
geg6
@guster:
Thanks for making me spray Pepsi all over my cashmere sweater. Damn, that was fucking hilarious.
Zam
@david mizner: Yea if I had to guess it would be because of her crazy christian supremacy that she spouts off daily that might be turning Jewish voters off.
Villago Delenda Est
You see, unless Jews are bible believing Christians, they’re just another flavor of mud people.
Basically.
Sputnik_Sweetheart
My problem with Sarah Palin is more about her seeing the Jews and Israel as a stepping stone to the Rapture than her appearance.
Also, I believe Jennifer Rubin just called me ugly.
Brick Oven Bill
‘Neo-Liberals’ are those who maintain their paranoia that white males are Nazis. ‘Neo-Conservatives’ are former ‘Neo-Liberals’ who have been mugged. This Jennifer Rubin seems to describe what is perhaps a new emergence, the ‘Neo-Neo-Liberal’.
El Cid
Is Bar Rafeili a Sarah Palin fan?
Poopyman
@david mizner:
She delivers one dogwhistle after the other with a wink and a smile. I’m a male WASP and I still shudder to think of her having any power at all.
Ash Can
The thread, she is won. Hats off to guster.
Carnacki
@david mizner: A better use of time.
MikeJ
@scav: If she had fired a trooper and had carried out judgments against him
Dayenu
arguingwithsignposts
you know who else was a politician Jewish women didn’t like?
just thought i’d get that out of the way.
Linda Featheringill
@Brick Oven Bill:
I understand the logic of that line of thought.
Personally, I have met with some violence in my life [little ol’ WASP me], always at the hands of white Christians. And their god did not strike them down. I think that their god does not deserve to be worshiped.
Once upon a time, one dude made a half-hearted attempt to mug me. When he found out how little I had he just said, “Shit, girl” and walked away.
artem1s
Adam Sandler can now add this line…
Sarah Palin, still not a Jew, Dayenu, dayenu!
monkeyboy
I don’t get this. Palin is a big Israel supporter and favors the US bombing Iran which the Israeli right wing has been promoting as the BIGGEST THREAT TO ISRAEL. (Iran really isn’t a threat to the US but we should be manipulated into acting against it because it is portrayed as a threat to the 51st state).
The Israeli right-wing is big on promoting internal cohesiveness and solidarity by fear mongering against external threats either real or imagined. Without a notion of persecution, Israel might just assimilate into the rest of the civilized world and not treat its Muslim citizens as internal enemies whose number has to be kept down.
bago
So I hear you like foreskins…
Poopyman
@bago: Wait, are you using that as a pickup line? Might want to rethink that.
Dee Loralei
@guster: Dude! The funniest thing I’ve read in weeks! I am so nominating the foreskin line as comment of the year. DougJ, please make note.
JWL
Yeah, Palin isn’t frumpy enough. That’s got to be it.
It has nothing to do with the fact she’s a bird brain, a veritable walking, talking cuckoo clock.
New Yorker
Damn Jews! Voting for people with brains who don’t live like trailer trash!
Poor Jennifer. Bar Refaeli gets to pose for Sports Illustrated and bang Leonardo DiCaprio while she has to write for Commentary after her parents made her go to law school. Life’s not fair!
mak
So now the WaPo apparently views the Washington Times as its competition? How very sad.
4tehlulz
So Jews prefer people who they’d have a Manischewitz with?
aimai
@Linda Featheringill:
Isn’t a regrown foreskin enough of a prize?
aimai
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
OT: From the Chronicle of Higher Education, the story of a short-lived college devoted to the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Did I mention short-lived?
catclub
@JCT:
“many Jews are not fooled by the “Pro-Israel” position of these guys.”
I hope that ‘not fooled’ crowd would go to the point of actually opposing those guys. But I see no evidence. The anti-defamation league ignores all the anti-semitism from right-wing christian cranks if they back the Israeli right wing.
IM
Jennifer Rubin is fighting anti-semitism by proving that not all jews are clever and wily. Some like her are as dumb as any one else.
Really. Compared to her even Kristol is an intellectual giant.
Makes the choice of Douthat by the Times look suddenly much better.
Keith G
@aimai: I don’t think so.
SiubhanDuinne
@geg6:
Pepsi, cashmere sweaters, and Balloon Juice comments are pretty much always a bad combination.
Mark S.
God, I could only get through half of it. Here’s my astute analysis: Jews don’t like Palin because she is far to the right of most of them and they think she is a dolt.
Roger Moore
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
My favorite bit:
What kind of Objectivist would depend on the State to guarantee that their education was going to be sound? Aren’t Objectivists supposed to be bold idealist supermen who do things their own way and don’t need a nanny state to look out for them? Isn’t the marketplace the right place to decide which schools are good and which ones aren’t?
Anne Laurie
@scav: __
“It would have been enough!”
Anne Laurie
@aimai: It’s not a prize if Andrew Sullivan starts stalking him.
Poopyman
This just in* : George Will only Ranked #11 in the Salon Hack 30.
* — Yeah, yeah, it was 35 minutes ago.
JCT
@catclub: Nope– don’t make the mistake of thinking that all Jews support everything that Israel does, we’re not remotely that monolithic. There are huge splits in the Jewish community over this.
And the ADL lost it’s way a long time ago, it’s sad.
Upper West
@Nylund:
Glad to hear that Nylund. I have been shocked and disappointed at smart Jews I know who support Palin because she has an Israeli flag on her desk (right over the John Birch Society newsletter).
It shouldn’t be a surprise in light of Abe Foxman’s support for Glenn Beck (even after Beck’s storm trooper assault on George Soros).
Roger Moore
@Poopyman:
I hadn’t realized just how hacktastic our press must be for Will not to be in the top 10. If I wanted to pick a single example of how much of a hypocrite Will is, it would be his attitude toward baseball free agency. For a long time he took the slightly surprising view that conservatives should praise the MLBPA because they were standing up for a free market in player services, while the owners were a bunch of sockalists. Naturally, though, that viewpoint only lasted until he became a minority owner of the Orioles, at which point he became is vigorous proponent of whatever Bud Selig said on the matter. It’s just a perfect example of how the most important conservative principle is IGMFU.
Upper West
@catclub:
Idiots like Foxman and Podhoretz support or won’t criticize Palin and Beck. But Jews generally view them unfavorably and still vote Dem.
asiangrrlMN
@guster: Yeah, late to the party, but:
is the best. damn. line. of the year, if not the decade.
As for the reason why blah-di-blah didn’t like Palin–it’s pretty much the same across cultures, I would think. Stupid, venal, vapid, amoral, and lazy are five excellent reasons not to like someone.
Allan
The reasons we Libtards hate Sarah Palin:
She’s so pretty.
She’s so smart.
She didn’t abort any of her babies (that we know about).
It’s the same crap you find on Free Republic.
Great hire, Kaplan Test Prep!
debbie
@Nylund:
John Hagee has said this often and with no apologies. He is of the belief that smart Jews will convert on the spot.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Poopyman:
At this point being on The List is probably a point of pride with the Villagers. Sort of like when Art Buchwald got all pissed off because he wasn’t on Nixon’s Enemies List.
If you aren’t on The List, you are officially a nobody.
JWL
Will is a minority owner of the Orioles? I did not know that.
Just last night I watched the MLB channel, and they ran a history of the ’69 season. It brought back a lot of good memories. It served as a reminder of why I’ve long had a soft spot for the Orioles– their teams in those years rank among the best I’ve ever seen play ball.
And I know most ownership groups are… not my kind of people.
But my affection for that franchise has just diminished appreciably.
SenyorDave
Chronicle of an ex-WaPo subsriber.
1995 Move to DC, miss NY Times, but realize new perspective, still get to read a great American newspaper
1995 -2009 Steady reader, unhappy with slide toward full fledged neocon universe
2009 WaPo accepts ad for Fox News touting “fact” that only they covered Tea Party rally, using picture taken from another network’s news feed
Later 2009 Call to cancel, receive offer for 75 cents a wek, down from $4.50 per week
Early 2010 Cancel after seeing another Chuckie Krauthammer “Obama isn’t one of us” type columns
Mid 2010 Stop receiving from WaPo after 6 months more, miss Sunday for a while
Later 2010 Within weeks of each other, D’Souza Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist and Caddell Obama should resign columns appear, making me realize that the WaPo I used to enjoy is gone for good.
May Fred Hiatt rot for killing agreat American newspaper
trizzlor
Yes, what is it about a populist demagogue who speaks only to the “real” part of the populace while lashing out against intellectuals that makes Jews shudder. Must be her sexy hot looks.
John Bird
I offer the theory that Jewish-Americans don’t like Sarah Palin because they realize that America’s anti-Semites have all moved into the Republican Party, and specifically into the part of the Republican Party that supports Sarah Palin.
Elizabelle
Maybe Rubin plagiarized from Robin Givhan, who’s written some astonishing crap herself.
And got praised with a Pulitzer for the Washington Post, years before Kathleen Parker.
(Givhan on Condoleeza Rice’s “Matrix” outfit a few years back:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51640-2005Feb24.html?nav=E8
Elizabelle
@SenyorDave:
So true.
The “poor Scooter Libby” editorials were the last straw for me. And I say that as someone who began reading the Washington Post as a child (local paper) and despises Fred Hiatt for what he’s done to a very good paper.
The late Katharine Graham wouldn’t recognize it. But she might pity it.
scarshapedstar
So, Jews hate Sarah Palin because Jews are ugly and Sarah Palin is not.
I can see why Jennifer gets paid the big bucks!
AlphaLiberal
I think she published her draft by mistake.
tomvox1
I haven’t laughed this hard since a nitrous binge in ’97.
scarshapedstar
@tomvox1:
Readin’… all this time she’s been a LIBRUL in disguise!