'Dead Again'

Christ killing has been back in the news. It seems that my ancestors are once again catching hell for their alleged betrayal of God's son, this time from fundamentalist Christian basketball player Charlie Ward and fundamentalist Christian political organizer Paul Weyrich.

Speaking to The New York Times Magazine, the New York Knicks' point guard set off a controversy in April when he informed a Jewish reporter, "Jews are stubborn.... why did they persecute Jesus unless he knew something they didn't want to accept?" and added, "They had his blood on their hands."

If you read about this and thought, Who cares what some basketball player says about who killed Christ?, I'm with you. And if you were wondering whether the New York Knicks organization, the National Basketball Association or Madison Square Garden also blame the Jews for the Crucifixion, well, you can relax about that too. All three have helpfully issued statements putting that rumor to rest. But two people who have seemed oddly sympathetic are Florida Secretary of State Katherine (Cruella De) Harris and Governor Jeb (Fredo) Bush.

Cruella chose Ward, who won the Heisman Trophy playing college football in Florida, as the state's "Born to Read" literacy campaign spokesman. When the local chapter of the American Jewish Committee asked her to reconsider in light of the fact that the guy was spreading what used to be called a "blood libel"--one that has led, historically, to the murder of countless Jews, who happen to make up a significant portion of the state's citizenry--she demurred. That's when Fredo stepped in: "If we're going to become so rigid as a country to be able to disallow speech, even though it may not be politically correct, I think we're in danger."

Strictly speaking, the First Little Bro was absolutely right. But his statement had nothing to do with the controversy it purported to address. Nobody is denying Ward's right to speak as an ignorant anti-Semite, or even to play point guard in this highly Jewish metropolis as one. The issue is whether, in light of his comments about Jews, he remains the best possible representative of Florida's literacy campaign. Bush seems to have taken to its logical extreme the conservative habit of labeling any community standards of speech, no matter how sensible, "political correctness" gone mad, unless they involve protecting a citizen's right to threaten the lives of abortion doctors or to own assault rifles. If Democrats in the land of King Condo can't beat this anti-Semite-enabling creep next year, they should find another country.

Another staunch defender of the anti-Semites' right to blood-libel Jews is David Horowitz. When Paul Weyrich announced on his Free Congress website that "Christ was crucified by the Jews who had wanted a temporal ruler to rescue them from the oppressive Roman authorities.... He was not what the Jews had expected so they considered Him a threat. Thus He was put to death," a previously obscure right-wing pundit named Evan Gahr denounced him quite sensibly as an anti-Semite. The denunciation went up on Horowitz's website, which, like Weyrich's Free Congress movement, is heavily funded by conspiracy nut Richard Mellon Scaife. But it was ordered expunged by the same fellow who can currently be found whining at your local college about his own victimization at the hands of something he calls "the fascist Left."

While an unhealthy proportion of the far right has always had a soft spot for this kind of theological anti-Semitism, virtually all mainstream Christian churches have explicitly repudiated it. But Gahr was not only informed that his work would no longer be welcome on Horowitz's generously funded site; he was kicked off the masthead of The American Enterprise, the magazine published by the Scaife-funded think tank of the same name. Next, the Scaife-funded Hudson Institute, where Gahr had been employed (and Norman Podhoretz still is), also sent him packing. Stanley Crouch, the neo-neoconservative, compared the right's treatment of Gahr to a Stalinist purge ("Horowitz and Stalin: Together Again").

Personally, I can live with the injustice done to Gahr, who first came to attention as a media gossip/hatchetman for Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. Live by conservative attack-dog tactics, die by them, I say. But what does it reveal about modern-day American conservatives that they cannot countenance a denunciation from within their ranks of the kind of ignorant anti-Semitic remark that has historically led to mass murder?

Horowitz notes, allegedly in Weyrich's defense, that he made his statement in his "capacity as a Melkite Greek Catholic deacon." He might have made it in his capacity as the Pillsbury Doughboy for all the difference it makes. Weyrich, as Joe Conason pointed out, has long been swimming in anti-Semitic sewers. There's his early involvement with George Wallace's American Independent Party, along with his foundation's long association with Laszlo Pastor, who was convicted of Nazi collaboration for his World War II role in the violently anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, and who was tossed off the Bush/Quayle campaign in 1988. Conason notes that another longtime Weyrich aide served on the editorial board of the Ukrainian Quarterly, an ethnic rightist publication strongly influenced by former Nazi collaborators.

All in all, it's rather odd that somebody--however deluded--who claims to be both a Jew and a champion of free speech should be censoring a writer who condemns the most disgusting kind of anti-Semitism, but then again, it's a bit counterintuitive to find a governor who also happens to be the President's brother defending his state's right to choose the same type of anti-Semite to represent it to children and others trying to learn to read.

No wonder Jim Jeffords wanted nothing to do with these goofballs. One Republican, writing on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, has already accused the Vermonter of a "pattern of betrayal." I sure hope Jeffords has a good alibi for Good Friday, 33 AD.

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