APS (who has kindly visited this blog before) nails me, on my Dershowitz and Catholics item, by pointing out that in 1960 John Kennedy was getting hit with innuendo so that’s why he went to the Houston ministers.
OK, fair enough. I still call for more Jewish transparency, and point to the Catholic model.
Look at Sen. Rick Santorum, running for reelection in Pennsylvania. Just about every time he’s in the press, people talk about what a devout Catholic he is, because of legitimate fears of religious geeks in politics.
Thus, the second paragraph of a recent story in The Hill calls Santorum, “The dedicated Roman Catholic and fierce opponent of abortion rights..” Or there is this dissection in the Jewish Exponent last week of Santorum’s belief system:
The press will look at Christian evangelicals all day long, what they believe about blah blah blah. And generalize to a farethewell, make them sound like crazies. And maybe they are. But the press will not look for even an instant at Jewish beliefs surrounding the Middle East. The observant Jew David Frum helped to author our current Syria and Iran policy; he was the Bush speechwriter who collaborated on the Axis of Evil speech. In a recent sermon at a Washington synagogue, Frum described America as “this new Israel, this America, this haven and refuge for so many of the persecuted of the world, including Jews.” And said that Israel’s “neighbors” were “determined to repeat the work of the Nazis.”
I would question the accuracy of that statement. I believe there is a religious component to it. I’d never know about it from the press, though. Frum, bless his openness, chose to blog it.
