Chgo Trib: If Clinton 1st black prez, Obama is 1st Jewish prez

By Warner Todd Huston

In another ridiculously lionizing report, the Chicago Tribune has capitalized on the silly 1998 claim by Toni Morrison that Bill Clinton was the "first black president" by finding an Obama sycophant that is claiming Barack Obama is the "first Jewish president." Will this nonsense ever cease?

Sadly, the report barely mentions the anti-Israel stances that Barack is taking much less the many close Obama associates, advisers and transition team members that are virulently anti-Jew. The piece does mention terror cheerleader Rashid Khalidi, but does not mention folks like Susan Power and Hamas booster Robert Malley, both on Obama's foreign policy team. Any anti-Jewish sentiment that Obama has thus far shown in policy ideas and associates was given little notice by this Trib article in favor of the Jews pushing for The One.

But, this "first Jewish president" claim is the central foolishness here. In fact, to use Toni Morrison's example is not even an apropos comparison. In 1998, Morrison wasn't lauding Clinton as a "black" man as if he was the perfect representative of her fellows politically. It was no honorific.

Here's the part in her piece in which she outlined why Clinton was "like" a black man in her opinion.

African-American men seemed to understand it right away. Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.

You see, Morrison was saying that the evil Republican attack machine was treating Clinton as they would a downtrodden black man. She was not saying Clinton was an honorary black man or one that should be thought of as their best representative at all. She was using the point to push the trope that all whites hate black men and that the attacks on Clinton was similar to how black men are treated by whites.

So, are these guys the Trib is reporting on feel that Obama has been persecuted just like Jews have been to make him into the "first Jewish president" in keeping with the Morrison theme concerning Clinton? If they are, it would be rather insulting. But, they employ even less "intellectual" reasoning applied to Obama than Morrison did with Clinton. They are merely making gratuitous claims, unlike Morrison who at least had a serious point to make, no matter how far off she was in the truth of the matter.

In the end, this flight of fancy is just proof once again that no one really knows anything about this man and are childishly willing to bestow upon him what they want to see, not what he is or is not. And for the Tribune's part, it amounts to simple, gauzy hagiography and not serious reporting.

(Cartoon credit: huffingtonpost.com)

© Warner Todd Huston