Howling at George Allen

One of my favorite writers is Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby. He's provocative even when I disagree with him. Somerby seems most of the time to be calling for a more aggressive and pointed stance by liberal Democrats, especially when it comes to criticizing the mainstream press corps. But in suprising cases, he seems to blanche at the thought of Democrats getting aggressive in challenging Republicans and the press.

For instance, he clearly admires Al Gore. His signature Daily Howler topic has been the press' War Against Gore. And after watching press reactions to Gore since 2006 a little more closely than I did during the 2000 election that Gore won, I've found Somerby's basic critique on that topic to be well-grounded. And, yet, he has been saying it would be a bad idea for Gore to run for re-election in 2008 - because the press corps is so hostile to him!

Theodore Bilbo, one of George Allen's spiritual predecessors (though Bilbo was arguably more liberal)


Somerby also makes an odd concession at times to the Republican "culture war" notion that "hippie" values are at the root of all social problems over which they obsesss from HIV/AIDS to the presence of scary Negroes and funny-talking brown people. In his post of 09/21/06, Somerby goes after "hippie" values again, this time in the form of a reporter who asked Virginia Sen. George Allen - who has been signaling his friendship to white supremacists by things like his "macaca" comment and by kissing up to the white-supremacist group Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), formerly known by the more descriptive name of White Citizens Council - about his own Jewish background.

Allen himself, who didn't know what "macaca" meant and assures us he ain't no Jew


In his 09/21/06 post, Somerby discussed the incident in which a reporter was booed when she asked Allen a question about his Jewish ancestry:

Here's a guess about the booing: Average voters don't like priggish liberals when they start to cast aspersions at 83-year-old mothers. And yes, that’s what some liberal sites do even this morning. We got simple facts wrong on this story all week; we kept posting brainless, mind-reading e-mails; and even today, we won’t show respect for the life an elderly woman may have lived. In short, we just won’t take our big long noses out of the Allens’ business. Many Americans don’t like such traits, and we’ll guess this will make Allen more sympathetic. Too bad - Allen is a horrible candidate who supports a horrible war. But like so many in her fatuous tribe, Fox didn’t want to be bored with tiring, tedious topics like that one. Given the chance to ask just a few questions, she decided to poke her nose into Allen’s family, and the hippie elements in our tribe - the ones who said nothing about Kerry’s episode - couldn’t help rushing to tell the whole world: We are better - far, far better - than a vile man like George Allen. Of course - of course! - George Allen knew. After all, he’s less fine than we are.

We’ll take a guess: As in the 60s, so today, our "hippie” instincts may be turning off voters, humanizing the hapless Allen and costing Webb a chance for an upset. But then, we’re better - much better - than they. Sometimes, a tribe wants to say it.

I find several things puzzling about Somerby's position here. Starting with the fact that it's not at all clear to me why asking about someone's religious background is a "hippie" value. Haven't the Republicans been working for the last quarter century to put religion "back in the public square"? Sometimes you get what you pray for, for better or worse.


Somerby is bothered by the fact that liberal Web sites seem more irritated at Allen over this than they were about a very similar revelation about John Kerry during the 2004 campaign. And he has a good point in using Kerry's example to illustrate the fact that it's not that unusual for a person to be unware of even major facts about the lives of their grandparents, as Allen claims he was about his maternal grandfather being Jewish.

But the real point to me is that the CCC crowd is a white-supremacist, anti-Semitic group and Allen has been promoting himself with "mistakes" like the "macaca" crack to the white-supremacist crowd. The fact that with a mother who was raised Jewish he could be considered Jewish in the eyes of an Orthodox rabbi makes his pandering to white-supremacists even more bizarre.

(Before I get too far away from it, too, reading Somerby regularly has taught me ask questions like, in this case, why does he assume the reporter is a liberal? She may well be, and the Howler is more likely to know than I am.)

My impression of Somerby's perspective is that he would prefer to see the Dems go after the Reps on working-class economic issues, the sort of thing that is vaguely called "populism" in American politics. (In European politics, "populism" is used more-or-less as a synonym for rightwing demogoguery, which is almost the opposite of its American meaning.) He seems to worry that the Dems tend to get too stuck in "interest-group" politics around race-related issues.

My own perspective is that it's very important for the Democrats to highlight the many ways in which radical-right ideas on race, immigration and many other things are mainstreamed into the Republican Party by people like Allen. This piece from TPM Muckraker talks about how Allen's cozying up to the CCC a decade ago not only let him give a wink-and-a-nod to the racist right, but also helped the CCC win newfound credibility within the Republican Party: Photo Aside, Pro-White Group "Never Supported" Newly-Jewish Allen, Leader Now Says by Justin Rood 0921/06.

I'm sure to the good ole white boys at the CCC, any criticism of their harline racist ideas does sound like hippie-Islamunist-Jew raving. But the Democrats shouldn't be throwing away opportunities like this when a Republican who's pandering to the far right exposes himself the way Allen has. For the Dems in the very short-run sense (November), the point is not to woo Southern Christian white people who aren't going to vote for them anyway. It's about stripping Republicans in the South and nationally of their "moderate" alter-image that reassures affluent Republicans suburbanites that they can be Republicans and not be in bed with the likes of the White Citizens Council.

On this topic, see also Glenn Greenwald at Salon's War Room: The question of newfound Jewishness 09/21/06; and, Jesus' General in George Felix Allen proves he's not Jewish 09/21/06.

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