Alluding to novelist Toni Morrison’s sobriquetical designation of Bill Clinton as the nation’s first black president, David Paul Kuhn argues that the anti-Semitic rhetoric employed by Barack Obama’s critics make him America’s first Jewish president:
Many liberals are struggling to digest the far right’s virulence. Some leading voices believe as Jimmy Carter recently said, “an overwhelming portion” of that virulence “is based on the fact that he is a black man.”
Obama’s extreme opponents, however, do not paint him with black stereotypes. Radicals, unintentionally, have instead often depicted him using conventionally negative Jewish stereotypes.
Most conservative protest signs confront tax dollars funding big government and big banks. Real Americans forced to save the moneylenders! But the signs are ignored and racial subtext is sought. If indeed there is bigotry, is it more along the script of hate for blacks or Jews?
Think Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” or William Jennings Bryan’s anti-Semitic overtones, his frequent references to the House of Rothschild. Just as tellingly, Obama is caricatured as a socialist—a philosophy long pinned on Jews. “Spread the wealth around” is said to betray his inner Marxist.
Then there is his biography. Obama’s many homes: Kansas, Indonesia, Hawaii and Chicago. This black man was the “wandering Jew.” He became the “rootless cosmopolitan,” a term Joseph Stalin summoned in his campaign against Jews.
Read the entire piece at RealClearPolitics.