“A Pilgrimage On Bended Knee”: Chris Christie Apologizes, For Saying Something True
Current and former Republican governors with their eyes on the 2016 presidential nomination sought casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s cash at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting this weekend in — where else? — Las Vegas.
None of the speakers, including Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, are Jewish. But some made efforts to boast (awkwardly, the Times notes) their loyalty to the Jews.
In Christie’s case, this effort quickly turned sour, at least in Republican “pro-Israel” eyes. Like any non-Jewish politician addressing a Jewish audience, Christie fondly recalled a trip to Israel. But he made the fatal error of uttering a word that will, for this particular Jewish audience, immediately and without further thought or adjudication turn the speaker into an enemy.
“Occupied.”
Within hours, Christie had been forced by his host to apologize — ordinarily no mean feat, as long-time observers of the Bridgegate governor’s modus operandi know.
According to POLITICO’s Ken Vogel, Christie made a pilgrimage on bended knee to Adelson himself:
Not long after his speech, Christie met with Adelson privately in the casino mogul’s office in the Venetian hotel and casino, which hosted the RJC meeting.
The source told POLITICO that Christie “clarified in the strongest terms possible that his remarks today were not meant to be a statement of policy.”
Instead, the source said, Christie made clear “that he misspoke when he referred to the ‘occupied territories.’ And he conveyed that he is an unwavering friend and committed supporter of Israel, and was sorry for any confusion that came across as a result of the misstatement.”
Note here that Christie, aside from his use of the forbidden (but true) word “occupied,” expressed no sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Here’s the full context: “I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories across and just felt personally how extraordinary that was to understand, the military risk that Israel faces every day.” Got that? Using the word “occupied” overshadows that what Christie took away from the experience was the conclusion that Israel is the only party facing risk and danger.
Scott Walker is no doubt doing a little happy dance right now. With all the attention on Christie’s faux pas, no one is paying attention to his lame pander that he likes to light a menorah during the Christmas holiday season.
By: Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches, March 30, 2014
“Jesus Wasn’t White, But Santa Definitely Is”: It Also Seems That Santa Is From Mississippi
This past week, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and her guests were discussing an article by Aisha Harris in which Harris described how Santa’s consistent depiction as a white man made her feel uncomfortable and excluded as a young black girl in America.
As her panelists began to broach the topic, Kelly made what she clearly thought was an important interjection:
And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white. But this person is maybe just arguing that we should also have a black Santa. But, you know, Santa is what he is, and just so you know, we’re just debating this because someone wrote about it, kids.
And she went on:
Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change. You know, I mean, Jesus was a white man too. He was a historical figure; that’s a verifiable fact – as is Santa, I want you kids watching to know that.
So, according to Kelly, Santa is white, and so is Jesus. And I must say, in my opinion, she is half right, which is one more half right than she usually is.
Jesus isn’t white, but Santa definitely is.
Santa is basically a benevolent imaginary character with super powers. And if you’ve seen any superhero movies, those types of characters tend to usually be white. So his whiteness is really no surprise. But if white people want Santa, they can have him. All he ever got me for Christmas was socks and cologne. And you can only have so many bottles of Eternity.
Santa has the complexion of an egg. He is obese, and he rarely speaks in complete sentences. Not only is Santa white, it also seems that he is from Mississippi. The only times they name streets after nonwhites is when they lead civil rights movements, and even then it’s controversial. Santa has a street named after him for no good reason (remember “Santa Claus Lane”?). He is definitely white.
Santa is bit of a loner. Every year, he sits around his house making intricate gadgets with his imaginary assistants for 364 days. Then, he only visits his actual friends for one day. He is white for sure.
Santa makes his darker, subjugated, captive workers put in all the effort while he takes all the credit. As far as I know, those reindeer are not getting paid. Master Santa enjoys the fruits of their hard labor. And what do they get? A song. And it’s only about one of them. What an injustice!
So, Santa is unquestionably white. But what about Jesus? Kelly said that Jesus’ whiteness was a “verifiable fact.” Now, I have a bit of a personal connection here. I am a Palestinian, as was Jesus. He was born in Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem. Jesus lived most of his life in Nazareth, which also happens to be the city of my origin. But I have never lived in Nazareth because of… well, that’s for another time.
Now it’s very possible that Megyn Kelly may have been a little confused here. If you simply type “Bethlehem” into Wikipedia, chaos ensues. There are Bethlehems all over the place. There’s one in Pennsylvania, one in New York, one in Connecticut, and one in Maryland. And it doesn’t stop there. They even have Bethlehems in England, South Africa, Switzerland, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. This can be quite overwhelming.
If you take a quick look at a map of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, there’s a town just 9 miles up the road named Nazareth. If you didn’t know any better, you could have thought Jesus grew up in that neighborhood. But that part of eastern Pennsylvania is also just a few miles from New Jersey, and I really can’t imagine Jesus having anything remotely to do with New Jersey.
Now, even if Megyn knew that the Nazareth and Bethlehem we associate with Jesus were halfway across the world, she still could have thought he was white. After all, the United States government defines white people as “original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East.” That would make Jesus white, except for the fact that he would not be the kind of white person that Megyn Kelly meant. In other words, I don’t think Megyn Kelly would consider my dad white, or Paula Abdul white, or Ahmed Ahmed white. But Jesus would look much more like any of those people than he would like her.
So Jesus wasn’t white. He didn’t look like Brad Pitt. He looked like Tony Shalhoub. He looked less like the pilgrims, and more like the people the pilgrims stole land from. He was not a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. He was an Olive Semitic Nazarene Jew.
If Jesus were here today, he would be exactly the kind of guy that most Fox News anchors would be in favor of racially profiling. He would be on the No Fly List (my editor is making me point out that Jon Stewart made a similar joke), not that Jesus needs a plane to fly, but whatever.
And by the way Megyn, if Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be a Tea Partier or a Republican. In fact, he wouldn’t even be a political conservative. He would believe in his own mantra of “that which you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me.” He would be upset that we spend more money on building monuments to him than we do on feeding our poor. He would be dismayed that we are supporting repressive governments to serve our interests. And he would be disappointed that we spend four times as much on our military than we do on educating our children.
After much criticism of her comments, Megyn Kelly responded with the “I was just joking” defense. “Humor is part of what we try to bring to the show. Sometimes that’s lost on the humorless,” she said of her declaration of Santa’s whiteness. But Megyn is making the same mistake many young comedians make early in their careers. See, a “joke” is a “joke” because it’s “funny.” And you don’t decide if it’s funny, your audience does. Megyn, what you said wasn’t funny. Well, we were laughing, but it wasn’t because you were trying to be funny.
As far as Jesus goes, Kelly did admit that it had been wrong for her to proclaim Jesus’ whiteness. Jesus’ race is “far from settled,” she acknowledged. She couldn’t bring herself to say he wasn’t white.
Megyn, please listen to me. Jesus’ origins are not “far from settled.” He was not white. He was from Palestine, not North Carolina. He was from where I am from, not where you are from. He fought against injustice and inequality. He was from my world, not yours.
White people can have the old, fat, white fantasy figure. But we’ll keep the olive-skinned, liberal, generous, charitable freedom fighter. We know much better what to do with him.
By: Amer Zahr, Time, December 18, 2013
“We Can’t Afford A President Romney”: An Israeli And A Palestinian On The American Presidential Election…They Don’t Want Mitt Either
Watching the American election from overseas, it makes sense to us that the conversation is mostly focused on the economic recovery. And yet, behind closed doors, topics related to us get discussed. What we’re hearing isn’t so great. In a video of a private meeting with wealthy donors, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, “I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say there’s just no way.”
We resent that. We’re an Israeli and a Palestinian—ordinary people from opposing sides of this conflict, who have forged a friendship based on the belief that this conflict can be ended with the shared vision of a two-state solution based on the borders of 1967 with mutually agreed upon land swaps. We have remained friends despite the challenges and the everyday apathy, hopelessness and despair of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We are again being tossed aside as dispensable pawns on an international chess board. If we have learned anything by living through this conflict, it is that we must hold our leaders accountable. If reconciliation through the two-state solution, hard as it will be, fails, it will only be because the leaders don’t make it a priority.
The trust-building process between Israelis and Palestinians is so delicate and essential for a future peace agreement, that every time a public figure uses dismissive rhetoric, we feel as if we are only walking backwards, scared of being pulled into another round of violence by those who benefit from the stagnation of talks. The idea that a candidate for President of the United States truly believes there is no hope for the two-state solution and that it is a problem that should be ignored not only scares us, it makes us furious.
For Americans, the two-state solution is a theory, a way out of a crisis that is, at best, worrisome. To us, the two-state solution represents our best hope for a livable future. We are aware of the difficulties such a solution holds, but the status-quo is not acceptable—it affects peoples’ lives on a daily basis, in almost everything they do—and it’s a dangerous strategy.
We do have our share of criticism over the negotiation process in the past four years and Obama’s attempts at restarting it. Still, we are pleased he at least considers it a priority. Under a hypothetical Romney administration, we have no hope this issue would be addressed—resulting in further upheaval and damage to the security and future prosperity of both the State of Israel and the future Palestinian State, and, eventually, America.
We are not alone in believing this. President Clinton, appearing on CNN recently, responded to Romney’s comments: “It is accurate that the United States cannot make peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. They have to do that. What we need to do is maximize the attractiveness of doing it and minimize the risks of doing it—we can do that.” He’s right: no American president will ever be able to force both sides to make peace. But a U.S. president can and must help by providing incentives, easing the way, taking the necessary steps, and, most importantly, believing it is possible. Romney simply lacks the hope and vision that we need in the leader of the most powerful country on earth. Obama is our chance to keep on the path for a two-state solution.
By: Ahmad Omeir and Danny Shaket, Open Zion, Daily Beast, November 2, 2012
” A Constantly Moving Target”: Mitt Romney’s Foreign Policy Speech Brings More Lies And Reversals In Positions
It would be laughable were it not so completely serious.
As I listened intently to Governor Romney’s foreign policy address delivered this morning at the Virginia Military Institute, I was sure I heard him say that President Obama had not signed so much as one free-trade agreement during the past three years.
The statement struck such a discordant note I pressed the rewind button to make sure I had heard the Governor correctly.
Sure enough, that’s what he said.
Apparently, the Romney campaign did not get the memo—or more likely chose to ignore the facts—that it was on October 23, 2011, not one year ago, when, in a rare moment of bi-partisanship, President Obama signed free-trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia.
Even the Republicans were happy about the event as Speaker of the House, John Boehner, issued a statement saying, “years of perseverance have been rewarded today as American job creators will have new opportunities to expand and hire as they access new markets abroad.”
Why would Romney say such a thing when it is so obviously disprovable?
If you have the answer to that question, maybe you can then tell me why Mr. Romney would also include in his address a bold statement of commitment to a two state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the important role he could play in bringing about the same, when we all heard him say precisely the opposite in the now infamous “47 percent” videotape of his speech at a fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida.
In case you need a reminder, here is what Romney said in that conversation which was intended to be private—
“I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say there’s just no way. So what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem…and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”
And yet, in today’s speech, Gov. Romney said—
“Finally, I will recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel. On this vital issue, the President has failed, and what should be a negotiation process has devolved into a series of heated disputes at the United Nations. In this old conflict, as in every challenge we face in the Middle East, only a new President will bring the chance to begin anew.”
Not only does Romney completely turn tail on what he expressed in private, he actually blames the President in today’s speech for failing at something Romney is on record as saying is an unsolvable problem.
And maybe someone can tell me why Governor Romney chose to excoriate President Obama for not getting sufficiently involved in the internal skirmishes taking place in various Middle-Eastern countries when Romney went on record, in an April 2011 op-ed he penned for the National Review, and accused the President of being too aggressive in Libya by committing what he called ‘mission creep’?
Of course, it is possible Governor Romney simply forgot his most recent position on Libya given the number of times he changed his stance on that conflict.
In what might be considered a precursor to the now familiar Romney proclivity for “evolving” his stance to reflect what he thinks will best sell at any given moment, the Governor went through such a remarkable evolution during our efforts to assist the Libyans free themselves of the Gadhafi regime.
As Jake Tapper lays out in his October 20, 2011 piece on Romney’s ever changing view of our involvement in Libya, Romney managed to work through three, distinct positions on the topic over a one month period. The first was expressed in March of 2011, when the Governor criticize the Obama administration for being weak and not getting involved more quickly.
The second Romney position was no position at all, illustrated when, just one month following his initial take, Romney failed to even mention Libya during a speech delivered to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas where the Governor criticized Obama’s Middle-East policy. Having strangely omitted to discuss Libya during that speech, reporters sought to get the Governor to respond to questions on the topic. The encounter was described by the Las Vegas Review Journal as follows: “Romney was silent on Libya, the newest and stickiest military and U.S. policy problem as the United States and its NATO allies enforce a no-fly zone to help rebels oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. After his speech, Romney refused to take questions from reporters about his position on Libya. Instead, he and his wife, Ann, fled down a hallway and escaped up an escalator at The Venetian, where the event was held. ‘I’ve got a lot of positions on a lot of topics, but walking down the hall probably isn’t the best place to describe all those,’ Romney said, deflecting a Libya query as he walked quickly with half a dozen journalists trailing him.”
Finally, in the April op-ed Romney posted at Nationalreview.com, as noted and linked above, Romney wrote that he had, indeed, supported President Obama’s “specific, limited mission” but went on to then criticize Obama for getting further involved in what Romney called “mission creep”.
So, in March, Romney deemed the American response to what was happening in Libya as weak only to evolve his message —just one month later—to one expressing initial support for the administration’s limited mission and then criticized Obama for going too far.
Confused?
Get used to it. If there is one thing we know for sure, we will continue to have no idea of where Governor Romney really stands on both domestic and foreign issues because where he stands is a constantly moving target.
By: Rick Ungar, Contributing Writer, Forbes, October 9, 2012
“Public Message Vs Private Message”: What Mitt Romney Says When He Thinks The Public Won’t Hear Him
Mitt Romney, speaking in Virginia today, on the Middle East;
“I know the president hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy.”
Mitt Romney, speaking to donors in Boca in May, on the Middle East:
“[S]o what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem … and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”
Hmm. It’s almost as if what Romney says in private, when he thinks the public won’t hear him, differs from what he says in public.
Indeed, towards the end of today’s speech, Romney went on to say, “I will recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel. On this vital issue, the president has failed, and what should be a negotiation process has devolved into a series of heated disputes at the United Nations. In this old conflict, as in every challenge we face in the Middle East, only a new president will bring the chance to begin anew.”
Now, as a substantive matter, the notion that “a new president” who has no experience in or working understanding of foreign affairs will suddenly transform the peace process is pretty silly, but there’s another, more obvious problem.
We know Romney doesn’t mean what he’s saying. We know this, of course, because Romney’s said so.
The “47 percent” video didn’t leave any ambiguities in this area. The Republican spoke of “the Palestinians” as a united bloc of one mindset, arguing, “I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say there’s just no way.”
Romney then added he intends to show no leadership in this area at all, “hoping” — remember, “hope is not a strategy” — that someone other than the United States will somehow take the lead. If elected, “recommit America” to anything, except for letting others worry about the dispute after he “kicks the ball down the field.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 8, 2012
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