"Tax me, Henry. Tax me."
"Democratic Congressman "Handsome Henry" Waxman (D-CA) has a curious way of saying that voters usually vote their pocketbook-when they are Jewish. Waxman (who is himself Jewish), says that Jews who vote Republican do so to protect their wealth.
Doesn't Waxman realize that he is feeding into that old anti-Semitic libel about "rich money-grubbing Jews". If we always say that people vote their pocketbook, why is it that Jews who vote Republican are voting to "protect their wealth"?
Handsome Henry
Hopefully, come next November, everybody will vote to protect what "wealth" they have left.
"Handsome Henry" Waxman is a jerk.
A one-time colleague of mine has parents who are unobservant Jews. They live at your end of California. His mother used to rail about the German Jews who voted for Hitler because they were afraid the communists would come to power and take away all their wealth.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Waxman's statement is particularly healthy, because he is giving credence to the typical sound-byte pundit speculation, and the "It's all about my favorite issue" rhetoric from Ed Koch.
It is true enough that not as many Jews are poor working class union organizing socialists as was the case fifty or one hundred years ago. So, bloc voting is becoming diffused into a hundred different shades of self-interest and disinterest. So what?
I'll close with another story: this guy and a friend used to go trick or treating on Nov. 1. People would say "Halloween was yesterday." The boys would answer "We're Jewish," and get all the leftover candy, a larger quantity than they would have gotten the night before.