Mike the Mad Biologist

Clearly, Dennis Prager Doesn’t Know Very Many Elderly Jews

Posted by Mike on June 8, 2011
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Conservative commentator Dennis Prager has a nice little bigot eruption, brought to us by Thers at Whiskey Fire:

It is hard to imagine a more demeaning statement about black America than labeling demands that all voters show a photo ID anti-black.

This is easily demonstrated. Imagine if some Democratic politician had announced that demanding a photo ID at the voting booth was an attempt to keep Jewish Americans from voting. No one would understand what the person was talking about. But why not? Jews vote almost as lopsidedly Democrat as do blacks. So why weren’t Jews included in liberal objections to voter ID laws?

We all know the answer. Jews are generally considered intelligent and therefore no one would assume that obtaining a photo ID was demanding too much of even poor Jews (yes, there are poor Jews). Therefore, one can only infer that the argument that demanding photo ID for voting will disenfranchise many blacks suggests that many blacks lack the capacity to obtain a photo ID.

Well, I’m thinking about my Jewish grandparents when they were in their eighties.


Their international traveling days were well behind them, so their passports weren’t current. At that age, they weren’t really driving (nor should they have been), so certainly by their mid-to-late eighties, one or both of them didn’t have drivers licenses (I’m sure my grandmother didn’t). So it’s quite feasible that these sound-of-mind, regular (like clockwork) voters might have been unable to vote. I have no idea what their particular state had regarding photo IDs for non-drivers, but, if the law had changed suddenly, even if they could get such an ID, they might have simply not known about the change–and been unable to vote.

Of course, these rules would make it much harder for poor Jews to vote, but one of the dirty secrets about the Jewish community (I say this as a Jew) is that most of us are blissfully unaware of them. Our own internal mental image of American Jews doesn’t usually include poor ones, much to their detriment (maybe someone temporarily unemployed, but not day-in, day-out poor).

Let’s not forget that conservatives like Prager would probably love to institute poll examinations too. Although, Sarah Palin would probably flunk so maybe….

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Comments

  1. #1 tawaen
    June 8, 2011

    Also, too, there’s nothing horrible about suggesting that all minorities are totally interchangeable. Nope. Nothing at all.

    I love how he erases the experiences, histories and cultures of both black and jewish people in the U.S in order to make a totally vacuous point. And by love, of course, I mean the opposite.

  2. #2 ManOutOfTime
    June 8, 2011

    I’ve never listened to Dennis Prager or watched him on TV. Were it not for progressive blogs I might not know anything about him – except that he and I once belonged to the same temple, and he is the reason I quit.

    It was a Reform mega-temple in the hills between Westwood and the San Fernando Valley, and in the early 90′s the main sanctuary was booked solid with b’nai mitzvot on Saturdays. So, long story short, one of the young rabbis started a separate minyan with about as traditional a service as you can have with a Reform congregation. Prager started coming, then he started doing the drash. And he was completely insufferable. He’s one of these idiots that uses “reason” to “prove” the authenticity of the Torah. My favorite was that biblical archeologists are all wrong, that the Exodus must be literally true because why else would we still be following it?

    It’s no mystery neocons believe all the WMD conspiracy theories: if they are all like Prager they would seem to believe Pharoah scrubbed their history of the ten plagues and resulting liberation of thousands of Hebrew slaves. You know, just like Sadaam hid his WMDs in Syria. Or whatever.

    So, when they announced that was the first of a six-part series by Prager, I stopped going to the minyan and I never went back to that temple. What a phony – why was he even at a Reform shul? Same reason he’s on AM talk radio: because he’s a big fat lazy mendacious monster with an insatiable ego who loves to hear himself talk.

    Everything I needed to know I found out on a single Saturday.

  3. #3 mike
    June 10, 2011

    I dont see the outrage in Prager’s observation of grown men not knowing how to properly speak English. The charges of racism or bigotry seem absurd. I am not a fan of Prager’s but this outrage seems completely manufactured.