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If you need a good chuckle this morning, and I suspect you might, take a look at Jennifer Rubin’s WaPo blog, which is devoted, as it often is, to breathtaking pronouncements that American Jews are on the brink of abandoning Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, which will in turn trigger that president’s and that party’s final, much-deserved, plow-and-salt-the-earch destruction, forever and ever, amen. Rubin is often, perhaps even mostly, wrong, but almost never in doubt.
What makes today’s installment hilarious is that Rubin triumphantly cites as the unmistakable sign of impending disaster for Obama among Jews the defection of Marty Peretz, “maybe Obama’s most vocal Zionist backer in 2008.”
I don’t remember exactly when Marty turned on Obama, but it couldn’t have been much more than fifteen minutes after the Inauguration. By 2010, he was saying things like this:
Just about every principle of President Obama’s foreign policy has been exposed as, at best, stupid and, at worst, treacherous.
Yeah, someone with a jeweler’s eye might be able to discern the first stirrings of Peretz’ reluctant, more-in-sorrow-than-anger misgivings about the 44th president.
Fact is, before he mercifully sold his share of The New Republic to Chris Hughes, regular TNR readers (and indeed, TNR writers) knew each time we clicked onto the magazine’s site we might be treated to a fresh Peretz screed about the perfidy of the Obama administration. Yet Rubin hails as big, political momentous news an interview with Marty by the Wall Street Journal that pretty much sounds to me like every other recent Peretz pronouncement on Obama’s Middle East policies.
I wonder what’s next for Rubin? The revelation that former Clinton advisor Dick Morris doesn’t like Obama? Wait, stop the presses: Zell Miller has left the Democratic Party! And I hear a rumor that staunch southern Democratic senator Strom Thurmond might be on the edge of flipping to the GOP. The rout is on. Romney will sweep all 50 states, and D.C., in revolt against African-American Democrat Vincent Gray, could be a real nail-biter on November 6.
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TR on August 06, 2012 10:32 AM:
I saw Rubin on one of the talk shows a few weeks ago.
I never thought she could seem any dumber than she does in print, but in person her wide-eyed insanity is even more obvious.
I have no idea how she still has a job at the WaPo, much less how she hasn't been committed to an asylum yet. Maybe Obama's re-election will send her over the edge at long last.
If not that, a slammed door would probably do the trick.
c u n d gulag on August 06, 2012 10:41 AM:
What's next for Rubin?
'Oh, if that Lucky Lindy ever lands, that will spell doom for the end of the Obama Presidency!'
And as for why she still has a job at the WaPo?
She's a batsh*t insane Conservative, pro-Israel, hack.
The better question is how do Dionne, Robinson, and vanden Heuvel keep theirs?
dj spellchecka on August 06, 2012 10:42 AM:
"perhaps even mostly wrong."
ed, what's with the "perhaps?"
she's a conservative that writes for the kaplan press....they set new standards in wrongness on a regular basis over there
Jim, Foolish Literalist on August 06, 2012 10:45 AM:
I'm a little surprised you could only go back to 2010 to get a hysterical anti-Obama screed from Peretz. Before reading this, I would've confidently bet a large sum of money that Peretz had endorsed McCain in '08. There was a profile of Peretz a couple of years back, the NYT Sunday Mag IIRC, and the Beltway gossip mongers all focused on Peretz's sorta-kinda coming out; what surprised me was that he is not only an atheist, but was contemptuous of believing Jews in the US and Israel. The overall impression I took away is that the man is quite simply a stone racist, and that is the basis of his "foreign policy" views. No surprise that his fellow exterminate-the-brutes traveller Rubin is trying to flog him as a principled liberal critic of Obama.
Bo Shesler on August 06, 2012 10:52 AM:
Rubin is the epitome of laziness and sloppiness in right-wing punditry circles. I saw her on some Sunday talk show recently, too. She has a vacant look in her eyes and an overall unkempt appearance that totally explains her vapid writing.
She has taken a page out of the playbook of such silly luminaries as Limpballs and Seanie Vanity -- (1) decide upon your conclusion; (2) search for an event that is remotely connected to your preconceived conclusion; and (3) make up the rest of the stuff in between that remotely-connected event and your pre-conceived conclusion.
hells littlest angel on August 06, 2012 11:38 AM:
I really do try to keep the attacks not too ad hominem and not too crude, but Jennifer Rubin is just an asshole.
Steve P on August 06, 2012 12:16 PM:
Rubin and white racist rock--the common denominator is that their bases overlap in their low level of discrimination and taste. Some sets all you need is a big-butted chick with a tambourene.
DRF on August 06, 2012 12:42 PM:
If you asked me to guess, I would have guessed that Peretz supported McCain in 2008. Over the years, he has become a one-issue person and an increasingly rightwing voice on Israel. I can't say I have my finger on the pulse of the American Jewish voting population, but as one member of that group, I can say that I could care less what Marty Peretz thinks on pretty much any issue, and I doubt that he carries any weight with voters, if he ever did. I would be astonished if most Jewish voters even know who Peretz is.
TCinLA on August 06, 2012 1:11 PM:
Are we sure Jennifer Rubin is Jewish? I ask because in my experience, Jewish women are as a group just smarter than hell, and she's not keeping up her end even a little bit here.
Rich on August 06, 2012 1:36 PM:
Even before he and the likes of Andrew Sullivan destroyed TNR's credibility, Peretz's column probably were the most ignored in the magazine. Chuckles Krauthammer was a more articulate spokesman for the same opinions and he wasn't hobbled by Peretz's attachment to Irving Howe as a mentor. Howe's death seemed to signal Peretz's last sympathies toward Labor and his final movement to the heavy Likdnik-hood.
Why WSJ would bother with him doesn't say much for the WSJ, itself greatly degraded by an ideological hack, albeit one who didn't have to marry money in order to have it.
jjm on August 06, 2012 2:06 PM:
I seem to recall a marvelous picture from 2008: a marquee at a synagogue that said, "Don't forget to vote for the schwarze!"
The GOP is really deluded if they think Jews are going to defect from Obama and the Democrats in large numbers. In the GOP's anti-semitic stereotyping pea brain it is wondering, "Why? Aren't all Jews just made of money and wouldn't they therefore, a la Jenna Jameson, decide that if you're rich you vote Republican??"
Suki Barnstorm on August 06, 2012 2:52 PM:
So if all 2.2% of the population that is made up of Jews all voted against Obama, would that really make a big difference? Do they really have that much influence?
Daddy Love on August 06, 2012 4:15 PM:
Also, Vince Foster.
smartalek on August 07, 2012 12:44 AM:
"Do they really have that much influence?"
Course we do, silly!
Don't you remember how we own all the banks, Wall St, the newsmedia, and Hollywood?
And those are just the ones everyone knows about -- there's also the TriLateral Commission, Bilderberg, and the English Royal family...
And the fact that you'll surely write this off as just a joke, and/or the ravings of a major loon, is *proof* that the conspiracy is totally real!