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Monday, October 6, 2008 12:00 AM

"I find her offensive"

John McCain was making a bid for South Florida's Jewish voters, a crucial demographic in a purple state. But then he chose Sarah Palin as a running mate.

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  • Monday, October 6, 2008 02:28 PM

    Supertwink!

    My mother would have been proud to have Obama as a relative, given his story. Biden would have been recognised as another immigrant-like striver, and even McCain is vaguely reminiscent of some older Jews (note how the default "old person" voice for comedians is Miami-Jewish---Prof. Hubert Farnsworth aside).

    But from the odd-seeming (to us) form of Christianity to the airplane-based hunting to the Marketolatry to the disparagement of élite education (or just plain book learnin') to the exaggerated folksiness (check out footage of her from 2002, not a "you betcha" in earshot) I can't think of anyone who seems less, well...Jewish.

    I've often thought that the pejorative Yiddish phrase "goyische kopf" (lit., "Gentile head") refers not so much to stupidity or cruelty as such as to ways of thinking and acting that make no sense to Eastern European Jews and their descendants---attitudes so headless that (to crib from Enrico Fermi, kind of Jewish-seeming himself) "they aren't even wrong". (Example: I understand someone wanting my bicycle's stealing it, but I don't understand someone unable to steal my bicycle due to my care in locking its deciding to instead vandalise it.) (Example: throwing out food.)

    It's unfair not to vote for someone because they remind you of your polar opposite. On the other hand, Ms Palin seems to be getting what gains she has had on the basis of some number of people feeling that she's "just like them", a stupid reason to vote for someone, so it's only fair, or at least poetic justice.

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