Gawker thinks Stanley hasn't quite retired his Zsa-Zsa opera gloves after slapping hatchet-boy Dale Peck for a bad (oh so bad) review of Stanley's novel Don't the Moon Look Lonesome? (Interestingly not followed by Don't the Restraining Order Seem Excessive?) The reason is Crouch's Daily News column on Barack Obama's much-bruited candidacy for president in 2008:
[Obama's senate race] was never much of a contest, but one fascinating subplot was how [opponent Alan] Keyes was unable to draw a meaningful distinction between himself as a black American and Obama as an African-American. After all, Obama's mother is of white U.S. stock. His father is a black Kenyan. Other than color, Obama did not – does not – share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves.
Crouch isn't, contra Gawker, suggesting that Obama has to pass what in this context seems strange to call a litmus test for running as the first electable black for prez. But this does raise an interesting question as to how every pol suddenly "discovers" his or her Jewish roots roundabout election time (or, you know, make-nice-with-Milosevic summit time.)
Are John Kerry or Madeleine Albright really Jewish, given their backgrounds as passable goyim? Does it even matter?
Here's my suggestion: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who recently discovered he was a member of the tribe through distant lineage, ought to run against Obama in the primary. Talk about a total mind-fuck of ethnic politics!
The late, great Murray Kempton has a hilarious story somewhere about a Southern township that was so violently anti-Semitic it rallied to squash the candidacy of a Jew running for assemblyman or commissioner or something. The constituency went for the nice, Christian-sounding surname, only to awaken on Election Day to find that it'd voted in the first black man to hold public office within a 100-mile radius.
The recipe for tolerance: add irony, stir slowly, and wait a while.