Meghan McCain vs. "The View": Why are we in the media so selective about which anti-semitism we criticize?

A sequel to this morning’s post noting the progressive tendency to denounce anti-semitism when Jews are attacked by white supremacists and to denounce all hate crimes when Jews are attacked by Palestinian sympathizers or others from a “victim class.” It’s not just righties who’ve noticed that either:

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Phillips is a centrist Democrat representing Minnesota’s 3rd District, which happens to border Minnesota’s 5th, represented by Ilhan Omar. I’m going to guess that his disappointment at the muted response from progressives to the rash of anti-semitic attacks here in the U.S. hits close to home, literally.

Omar also features in the segment below, which is salty even by “View” standards. The topic was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s comment this weekend comparing Nancy Pelosi’s mask mandate in the House chamber to, uh, the Holocaust: “You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany… I think any rational Jewish person didn’t like what happened in Nazi Germany, and any rational Jewish person doesn’t like what’s happening with overbearing mask mandates and overbearing vaccine policies.” Most of the “View” crew is in high dudgeon about it and McCain concedes that it’s idiotic — but wants to know why they’re devoting airtime to what Greene said instead of to the violent attacks against Jewish Americans.

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Which is more important? And why is Greene’s idiocy any more emblematic of the Republican Party than the Squad’s radicalism is of Democrats?

Whoopi Goldberg is eager to remind McCain that Greene has never been punished by her own caucus whereas Pelosi has brought Omar into line. Eh, not really. The resolution that the House passed a few years ago after the uproar over Omar’s “all about the Benjamins” comments regarding AIPAC didn’t single her out and didn’t even limit itself to condemning anti-semitism. True to lefty form, it also took care to denounce “anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry against minorities” so as not to offend the party’s woker precincts by implying that their grievances are less serious than Jews’ are. The resolution was so diluted that Omar herself felt comfortable voting for it.

It’s true that Omar’s steered a little further away from controversy since then than Greene, who relishes it, has. But McCain reminds the audience that only one of them has been stripped of her committee assignments by Democrats for being fringy. And it ain’t Omar.

At another point Sunny Hostin cites the fact that Greene outraised AOC in the first quarter as proof that she’s more representative of the GOP base than Ocasio-Cortez is of the Democratic rank-and-file. But that’s a weak point considering that AOC was a fundraising dynamo during her first full term in the House, earning $20 million — more than every one of her Democratic colleagues except Nancy Pelosi. Even Adam Schiff, who became a Democratic hero for his role in Trump’s first impeachment, fell a bit short of Ocasio-Cortez. Ironically, Greene raked in big bucks this year for the same basic reason that AOC did in 2019-20, which is that she’s an avatar of a radical populist base that relishes seeing her drive the folks on the other side to distraction.

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Of course, AOC also has an agenda beyond just “owning” the other party. But then, Greene’s scarcely different from the rest of her post-policy party on that.

Start with the first clip here, which picks up around two-thirds through, and then watch the second. McCain, Goldberg, and Joy Behar are all palpably annoyed with each other by the end.


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Duane Patterson 10:00 AM | April 25, 2024
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