“Palin‘“ on the Jewish vote

Jews for Jesus, one of those “grab the pamphlet and giggle” operations, has been a running joke of the subway system here in New York City for decades now. I’ll give you one guess who was absorbing their bullshit two weeks ago…

[...] [Sarah] Palin’s church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus.

Palin’s pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church’s website.

“He’s a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism,” Kroon said.

Brickner then explained that Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish.

“The Jewish community, in particular, has a difficult time understanding this reality,” he said.
Brickner’s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”

Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity.

“Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It’s very real. When [Brickner’s son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can’t miss it.”

Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against attributing Brickner’s views to her.

As much as I hated the endless weeks of dog-whistling the media was doing about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, it definitely opened Sarah Palin up to this kinda scrutiny.  It’s going to be a goshdarn joy to watch the same people who howled “how could Obama go to that church for twenty years?” try to dig there way out of this Pile O’ Palin. In addition, I can’t wait for Todd Palin having to prove that he’s proud of America even though he wanted to secede from it.

This really couldn’t have been scripted any better.

MORE: Greg Sargent asks, “Why Isn’t AIP Founder Sarah Palin’s Reverend Wright?” Good question.

UPDATE: Make sure you read Betty Cracker’s excellent post regarding religion ‘n’ race right below this one.

Posted by Kevin K. on 09/03/08 at 09:24 AM • Permalink

Ultimately, I think all this Palin stuff will just sort of blow over and do even less damage than Gustav.  Why won’t any of these Palin scandals become Reverend Wright moments?  Because The Palin family is white and the Obama family is black and the American family is still racist.  Sad but most likely true and Betty nailed it in her post below.

The American family is still sexist too and that may act as an equalizer.  (Shirley Chisholm, who had a brief run for president in the 70’s said that she faced more discrimination from being a woman than she did from being black.) I think the AIP stuff will cause some problems but Palin’s ineptness as a mayor and governor are really the points that should be hammered on.  McC and the Repubs are now doing everything they can to piss off the media too so I’m not seeing any of this blow over for a while anyway.

I didn’t mean to say that like I think sexism is a GOOD thing (or racism):)

I didn’t mean to say that like I think sexism is a GOOD thing (or racism):)

Lol

Marindenver and Kevin K., I should have added a caveat at the end of my last comment: whether these things blow over or not the ineptness and all around craziness of the GOP and the McCain/Palin ticket will doom it to failure.  Plus Obama/Biden is just so awesome you would have to be a die hard republican, evangelical right winger or a racist not to vote for them.

After another day full of even more Palin revelations I would like to retract my above comments.  This lady is going down...I’d be surprised if she survives until the election.