Oops! There goes the tourist trade. Too bad for the fine citizens of the city of Hammond in northeastern Louisiana.
Hammond caught the world’s attention after Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, stood his ground after refusing to marry an interracial couple, a violation of a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows interracial marriage.
“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” he told an Associated Press reporter on Thursday, Oct. 15. “There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage. I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.”
A biracial child will never be accepted by blacks or whites, and he or she need not dream of being elected president of the United States.* Like Barak Obama. Louisiana is part of the United States. Technically.
A news release was posted on the city of Hammond’s Web site imploring reporters to alter their dateline from Hammond to nearby Robert, La., where Bardwell lives. The city stressed that Bardwell was independently elected and has no formal affiliation with Hammond whatsoever.
The Bardwell account coincides with nearly a half-dozen other domestic instances rooted in prejudice, including the beating of a gay man, the nauseous Limbaugh-Sharpton confrontation and an Irish singer’s anti-Semitic rant; I’m excluding the South Carolina flap about Jews because of mixed feelings. I have never been able to comprehend the thinking - or lack thereof - behind these attitudes or at least why some people cannot grow out of them. I am left trying to second-guess their motives, but I can think of some responses to them.
The episode that affects me personally was Irish tenor Ronan Tynan’s offensive comment about a Jewish woman seeking an apartment in his East Side building in Manhattan. A real estate agent who accompanied the woman told Tynan, who sometimes sings “God Bless America” at Yankees playoff games, that “they are not Red Sox fans.”
To which Tynan shot back: “I don’t care about that, as long as they are not Jewish.”
The woman complained to the Yankees after the Oct. 15 encounter, and they swiftly suspended his gig, The New York Daily News reported. He apologized to her and claimed to be joking, but the victim said it did not sound like that. What was he thinking? I’ll get to my theory later.
Back to Bardwell: I do notice that this justice lives in the South some distance from any big city. Is this a southern thing? A backwoods vantage point? I do not wish to lump all southerners and/or rural residents with this guy. If there is any truth to this, TV host Jay Leno said it best when he suggested Bardwell clings to the belief that a married couple should not be of the same race but from the same family. West Virginia is not alone.
Returning to the North, a 49-year-old gay man was beaten to a pulp in the College Point section of northern Queens on Oct. 8, as his assailants spewed out anti-gay slurs, police told the News. I concede that my attitudes about homosexuals have been less than perfect, but I generally do not care about one’s sexual orientation. It is ghastly that anyone would discriminate or physically harm someone because of their sexual orientation. There is something wrong with it, as Seinfeld might say.
Friends of the two suspects, both in their twenties, rationalized their actions when they showed up at a rally against anti-gay violence. “This whole rally is so pathetic,” said Camelisse Kiana, 15. “I don’t think this is a hate crime because he doesn’t have nothing against gay people.” Added Marcel Gelmi, “It was an assault but it wasn’t a hate crime.” We suppose that makes it okay.
Most bizarre is the ongoing duel of the dolts: Rush Limbaugh and Al Sharpton…sorry, that’s the Rev. Al Sharpton. Sharpton threatened to sue Limbaugh for accusing him of taking a “leading role” in the 1991 Crown Heights riots. Sharpton did take a “leading role” of forcing Limbaugh out of an investment team that sought to purchase part of the St. Louis Rams because of his well-documented racist rants on his radio show.
“I am definitely going to prove he makes reckless, unaccountable statements,” Sharpton said of Limbaugh.
Sharpton should know what he is talking about. During the funeral of 7-year-old Gavin Cato, whose death in an auto accident touched off the riots, Sharpton dubbed Crown Heights Jews as “diamond merchants” and referred to the “apartheid ambulance” service operated by ultra-Orthodox Jews there. Cato was fatally injured when struck by a vehicle operated by an Orthodox driver.
No reasonable person could side with either of these boneheads, but the merits favor Sharpton. His advocacy style has evolved to a more respectable level, though he has at best hinted at remorse for his revolting past. The right-wing Limbaugh still spouts absurdities like a little brat. Sharpton contends that Limbaugh’s accusation suggests that he committed a crime, which is true.
Limbaugh could clarify what he meant, but Sharpton still owes the Jewish community an explanation and apology after all these years.
It is not hard to speculate about what prompted Ronan Tynan’s conduct. I am not one to link a person’s drinking habits to an ethnic stereotype, but I am reminded of an incident in which a crude comment applies to Tynan.
A few years ago, a friendly but eccentric woman who had just flown into Boston from Ireland sat next to me on an Amtrak train headed for Maine. As the trip progressed, so did her eccentric ways. The more she spoke, the sooner I realized that she was soused.
As our conversation waned, she subsequently addressed a middle-aged couple across the aisle. After 10 minutes of chat, the husband chided her: “A little too much Irish whiskey, eh?”
Ouch. The woman was obnoxious, but responding to her with an ethnic slur was way out of line. It would have been a touche-moment if the Jewish woman in New York responded to Ronan Tynan with a line like that.
*I am not the only person to make the connection between Justice Bardwell’s remarks and the election of a biracial president, but this connection did occur to me soon after I learned of the episode and before I heard or read of it by others.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
CONGRESS DOUBLE-CROSS AT MOJAVE
The upshot of the Mojave cross dispute is simple: The federal government discriminated against a minority religion.
The government went to unusual lengths to retain a cross on public land after rejecting an application for a Buddhist shrine. A decade ago, the National Park Service turned down an application for the shrine and decided to remove the cross from a rocky outcropping at the 1.6 million acre Mohave National Preserve in southern California.
Congress intervened. It declared the site a national monument, forbade the NPS from spending funds to take down the cross and in 2003 voted to swap land with the Veterans of Foreign Wars so that the VFW would control the single acre of land surrounding the cross, which was erected by the VFW in 1934 to commemorate fallen soldiers.
The five relatively sane members of the U.S. Supreme Court will do well to consider this sequence of events before they cast their votes in the case of “Buono v. Salazar,” in which the feds claims that switching the property to private ownership makes the existence of the cross there constitutional.
When the Court heard arguments on Wednesday, Oct. 7, Justice Antonin Scalia left little doubt how he will vote, and the other three simplistic justices hinted that they will side with him.
Many Jews like myself resent having to observe religious symbols on public property, but even some of us recognize that these situations can often become convoluted. I personally interpret the First Amendment to mean that no religious symbols are permitted on taxpayer-funded property, but it is obvious that adhering to strict legalities means we would have to remake Arlington Cemetery.
The cross was repeatedly characterized as being located in the middle of nowhere, so why should anyone care? It is not as if the 8-foot high cross stands in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia or atop an abandoned fort on New York City’s Governor’s Island, both busy National Park Service sites. Mohave, which is 200 miles east of Los Angeles and 60 miles southeast of Las Vegas, is low on my vacation priority list.
Actually, Mohave does brisk business, with 628,000 visitors in 2008, according to the NPS Web site. Many visitors probably spot the cross while traveling on a nearby road, which means they see it once and briefly at that.
The fact remains that our government discriminated against a minority religion. Attorney Peter J. Eliasberg, who represents the American Civil Liberties Union, made a good case for that during a televised news conference. Republican U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis, whose district covers Mojave, reported on his congressional Web site that he coordinated the legislative measures at the behest of veterans groups.
This legal train wreck opened when then-preserve assistant superintendent Frank Buono proposed that the Buddhist shrine application be rejected and the cross removed, and NPS officials agreed to both. Congress subsequently blocked the NPS from spending any money to take away the cross, The Washington Post reported.
Buono, now retired, sued in 1999 and a federal district judge agreed that the cross violated constitutional standards; the ruling was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Congress subsequently declared the spot a national memorial and launched a deal to swap land with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, leaving the VFW with an acre of land surrounding the cross. Buono returned to court with the American Civil Liberties Union, and the appeals court stated that the transaction “would leave a little donut hole of land with a cross in the midst of a vast federal preserve,” according to the Post.
Buono is a practicing Catholic who keeps a cross in his home, but he opposes allowing a religious symbol on federal land.
Congress passed all these measures when Republicans were in control, yet Democrats neglected to overturn Lewis’s legislation when they took over after the 2006 midterm elections. It is no stretch to guess that they feared getting tangled up in a church-state issue, as did President Obama by persisting in defending the legislation in court. Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar, an Obama appointee and former Democratic senator from Colorado, is the “Salazar” in “Buono v. Salazar.”
Long forgotten has been the applicant for the Buddhist shrine even though Congress jumped through hoops to accommodate advocates for a Christian symbol. That is discrimination.
Three justices bolstered the point, if inadvertently, that these steps constitute discrimination during legal arguments. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. questioned if the land swap was “a sensible interpretation” of previous rulings, so acknowledging Congress’s far-reaching efforts to retain the cross.
Scalia patronized minority religions when he declared that the cross is the “common symbol of the resting place of the dead”; like most Jews, Eliasberg offered a different take as he reminded Scalia that “there is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.”
Justice John Paul Stevens automatically recognized the lengths to which Congress went when he asked the Obama administration attorney, “Do you think anyone thought there is the remotest possibility they (VFW) would put up a different memorial?”
That means Congress indeed discriminated against a minority religion. Buddhists in America are justified to claim they were, well, double-crossed by their own government.
The government went to unusual lengths to retain a cross on public land after rejecting an application for a Buddhist shrine. A decade ago, the National Park Service turned down an application for the shrine and decided to remove the cross from a rocky outcropping at the 1.6 million acre Mohave National Preserve in southern California.
Congress intervened. It declared the site a national monument, forbade the NPS from spending funds to take down the cross and in 2003 voted to swap land with the Veterans of Foreign Wars so that the VFW would control the single acre of land surrounding the cross, which was erected by the VFW in 1934 to commemorate fallen soldiers.
The five relatively sane members of the U.S. Supreme Court will do well to consider this sequence of events before they cast their votes in the case of “Buono v. Salazar,” in which the feds claims that switching the property to private ownership makes the existence of the cross there constitutional.
When the Court heard arguments on Wednesday, Oct. 7, Justice Antonin Scalia left little doubt how he will vote, and the other three simplistic justices hinted that they will side with him.
Many Jews like myself resent having to observe religious symbols on public property, but even some of us recognize that these situations can often become convoluted. I personally interpret the First Amendment to mean that no religious symbols are permitted on taxpayer-funded property, but it is obvious that adhering to strict legalities means we would have to remake Arlington Cemetery.
The cross was repeatedly characterized as being located in the middle of nowhere, so why should anyone care? It is not as if the 8-foot high cross stands in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia or atop an abandoned fort on New York City’s Governor’s Island, both busy National Park Service sites. Mohave, which is 200 miles east of Los Angeles and 60 miles southeast of Las Vegas, is low on my vacation priority list.
Actually, Mohave does brisk business, with 628,000 visitors in 2008, according to the NPS Web site. Many visitors probably spot the cross while traveling on a nearby road, which means they see it once and briefly at that.
The fact remains that our government discriminated against a minority religion. Attorney Peter J. Eliasberg, who represents the American Civil Liberties Union, made a good case for that during a televised news conference. Republican U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis, whose district covers Mojave, reported on his congressional Web site that he coordinated the legislative measures at the behest of veterans groups.
This legal train wreck opened when then-preserve assistant superintendent Frank Buono proposed that the Buddhist shrine application be rejected and the cross removed, and NPS officials agreed to both. Congress subsequently blocked the NPS from spending any money to take away the cross, The Washington Post reported.
Buono, now retired, sued in 1999 and a federal district judge agreed that the cross violated constitutional standards; the ruling was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Congress subsequently declared the spot a national memorial and launched a deal to swap land with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, leaving the VFW with an acre of land surrounding the cross. Buono returned to court with the American Civil Liberties Union, and the appeals court stated that the transaction “would leave a little donut hole of land with a cross in the midst of a vast federal preserve,” according to the Post.
Buono is a practicing Catholic who keeps a cross in his home, but he opposes allowing a religious symbol on federal land.
Congress passed all these measures when Republicans were in control, yet Democrats neglected to overturn Lewis’s legislation when they took over after the 2006 midterm elections. It is no stretch to guess that they feared getting tangled up in a church-state issue, as did President Obama by persisting in defending the legislation in court. Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar, an Obama appointee and former Democratic senator from Colorado, is the “Salazar” in “Buono v. Salazar.”
Long forgotten has been the applicant for the Buddhist shrine even though Congress jumped through hoops to accommodate advocates for a Christian symbol. That is discrimination.
Three justices bolstered the point, if inadvertently, that these steps constitute discrimination during legal arguments. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. questioned if the land swap was “a sensible interpretation” of previous rulings, so acknowledging Congress’s far-reaching efforts to retain the cross.
Scalia patronized minority religions when he declared that the cross is the “common symbol of the resting place of the dead”; like most Jews, Eliasberg offered a different take as he reminded Scalia that “there is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.”
Justice John Paul Stevens automatically recognized the lengths to which Congress went when he asked the Obama administration attorney, “Do you think anyone thought there is the remotest possibility they (VFW) would put up a different memorial?”
That means Congress indeed discriminated against a minority religion. Buddhists in America are justified to claim they were, well, double-crossed by their own government.
Monday, October 5, 2009
UNLIKELY COALITION RE: IRAN
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is doing to his people now what he wants to do to mine.
Iran’s president could not get away with jailing, terrorizing and murdering thousands who demonstrated against him at the United Nations and in several other cities on Thursday, Sept. 24, since leaders here and in other Western countries, however imperfect, allow citizens the freedom to protest. More than 40 organizations created the Stand for Freedom in Iran coalition to demonstrate against Ahmadinejad’s brutality of his fellow Iranians and his plans to destroy Israel.
Most notably, Jews and Iranians joined together to send Ahmadinejad a blunt message. It is hard enough to motivate members of any single group affected by a given issue, but here are two unlikely groups that gathered for a common cause. This event presents an opportunity to sustain ongoing pressure on Ahmadinejad from our part of the world.
It is hardly coincidence that Ahmadinejad antagonized both Jews and his own people. As natural bullies, tyrants will subjugate their own when they must and intimidate external groups or nations whenever they can get away with it. He picked on Israel partly because there is already an anti-Israel groundwork and he holds the strategic high ground.
The convergence of American Jews and Iranians, including Muslims, is a minor miracle. The Sept. 24 rally launched a coalition between two interest factions with life-and-death stakes in Iran’s future. Iranians are struggling for freedom and Jews are confronting a threat to Israel’s existence. Their pressure on Ahmadinejad can only help their respective peoples. To put it mildly, they face an uphill fight, but their failure to organize will help give Ahmadinejad a free hand.
For that matter, let’s hope that the other organizations which sponsored the rally, including African Americans and Puerto Ricans, continue to work with them. Ideally, all concerned people should be involved.
The lives of both Jews and Iranians could depend on what we do. Ahmadinejad no doubt exploited the levers of government to steal the June 11 election. Ordinary Iranians faced retaliation for protesting the election results. Though they swamped the streets of Tehran and other cities, people of Iran risked death, torture and imprisonment. Some were murdered or jailed simply because they chose to marched for their liberty.
Interestingly, Americans who filled the block-long Dag Hammarskjold Plaza for the Stand for Freedom in Iran rally reflected a relatively low turnout. The rally was scarcely covered by the New York dailies, and the few news reports I could locate suggested a range of 3,000 to 10,000. That’s light by New York standards.
Rally participants griped to a New Jersey Jewish News reporter that turnout was insufficient. “Where were all the people?” asked Gail Kushner of West Orange, near Newark. “There should have been a stronger representation of adults,” added Stan Shapiro of Roseland, also a Newark suburb.
I had planned to attend, but I was sick that day. A bus was chartered to pick up demonstrators from the Philadelphia area in Elkins Park, a northern suburb. Besides, the rally was held on a weekday when most people are working.
Jews must be concerned with Ahmadinejad’s obvious threat to demolish Israel with a nuclear device, still in development, while denying that Hitler wiped out 6 million Jews; thousands of Holocaust survivors still live to testify to Nazi Germany’s crimes.
In fact, Israel is already engaged in a war with Iran. Ahmadinejad initiated the war when Iran supplied its first weapon to Hamas or Hezbollah. Israel fought a two-front war in 2006 against Hamas and Hezbollah and invaded Gaza last December. This is reason enough for Israel to attack Iran.
Ahmadinejad built his nuclear development sites with the intention of preventing Israel or anyone else from eliminating these places, and he claims Iran can effectively retaliate. An Israeli attack would likely incite outrage among Arabs who will mass behind Ahmadinejad.
On the plus side, Ahmadinejad must worry about the fury and resentment among his people, but one cannot be optimistic that they will succeed in ousting him.
It is ironic that masses of Iranians face jail or death for exercising the rights we take for granted, yet opponents here constitute a relatively small number in a city where the police consistently facilitate demonstrations.
The Sept. 24 rally possibly contributed to progress in dealing with Iran. One week later, Iranian delegates made small but significant concessions aimed at preventing development of a nuclear weapon.
No time to rest. It should embolden opponents of Iran in America to persist with their protests. This sums it up neatly:
“This has to be a sustained effort,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, as quoted in The Jewish Standard, a weekly in Bergen County, New Jersey. “What we have to show is we’re committed to a course of action that will be effective.”
Iran’s president could not get away with jailing, terrorizing and murdering thousands who demonstrated against him at the United Nations and in several other cities on Thursday, Sept. 24, since leaders here and in other Western countries, however imperfect, allow citizens the freedom to protest. More than 40 organizations created the Stand for Freedom in Iran coalition to demonstrate against Ahmadinejad’s brutality of his fellow Iranians and his plans to destroy Israel.
Most notably, Jews and Iranians joined together to send Ahmadinejad a blunt message. It is hard enough to motivate members of any single group affected by a given issue, but here are two unlikely groups that gathered for a common cause. This event presents an opportunity to sustain ongoing pressure on Ahmadinejad from our part of the world.
It is hardly coincidence that Ahmadinejad antagonized both Jews and his own people. As natural bullies, tyrants will subjugate their own when they must and intimidate external groups or nations whenever they can get away with it. He picked on Israel partly because there is already an anti-Israel groundwork and he holds the strategic high ground.
The convergence of American Jews and Iranians, including Muslims, is a minor miracle. The Sept. 24 rally launched a coalition between two interest factions with life-and-death stakes in Iran’s future. Iranians are struggling for freedom and Jews are confronting a threat to Israel’s existence. Their pressure on Ahmadinejad can only help their respective peoples. To put it mildly, they face an uphill fight, but their failure to organize will help give Ahmadinejad a free hand.
For that matter, let’s hope that the other organizations which sponsored the rally, including African Americans and Puerto Ricans, continue to work with them. Ideally, all concerned people should be involved.
The lives of both Jews and Iranians could depend on what we do. Ahmadinejad no doubt exploited the levers of government to steal the June 11 election. Ordinary Iranians faced retaliation for protesting the election results. Though they swamped the streets of Tehran and other cities, people of Iran risked death, torture and imprisonment. Some were murdered or jailed simply because they chose to marched for their liberty.
Interestingly, Americans who filled the block-long Dag Hammarskjold Plaza for the Stand for Freedom in Iran rally reflected a relatively low turnout. The rally was scarcely covered by the New York dailies, and the few news reports I could locate suggested a range of 3,000 to 10,000. That’s light by New York standards.
Rally participants griped to a New Jersey Jewish News reporter that turnout was insufficient. “Where were all the people?” asked Gail Kushner of West Orange, near Newark. “There should have been a stronger representation of adults,” added Stan Shapiro of Roseland, also a Newark suburb.
I had planned to attend, but I was sick that day. A bus was chartered to pick up demonstrators from the Philadelphia area in Elkins Park, a northern suburb. Besides, the rally was held on a weekday when most people are working.
Jews must be concerned with Ahmadinejad’s obvious threat to demolish Israel with a nuclear device, still in development, while denying that Hitler wiped out 6 million Jews; thousands of Holocaust survivors still live to testify to Nazi Germany’s crimes.
In fact, Israel is already engaged in a war with Iran. Ahmadinejad initiated the war when Iran supplied its first weapon to Hamas or Hezbollah. Israel fought a two-front war in 2006 against Hamas and Hezbollah and invaded Gaza last December. This is reason enough for Israel to attack Iran.
Ahmadinejad built his nuclear development sites with the intention of preventing Israel or anyone else from eliminating these places, and he claims Iran can effectively retaliate. An Israeli attack would likely incite outrage among Arabs who will mass behind Ahmadinejad.
On the plus side, Ahmadinejad must worry about the fury and resentment among his people, but one cannot be optimistic that they will succeed in ousting him.
It is ironic that masses of Iranians face jail or death for exercising the rights we take for granted, yet opponents here constitute a relatively small number in a city where the police consistently facilitate demonstrations.
The Sept. 24 rally possibly contributed to progress in dealing with Iran. One week later, Iranian delegates made small but significant concessions aimed at preventing development of a nuclear weapon.
No time to rest. It should embolden opponents of Iran in America to persist with their protests. This sums it up neatly:
“This has to be a sustained effort,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, as quoted in The Jewish Standard, a weekly in Bergen County, New Jersey. “What we have to show is we’re committed to a course of action that will be effective.”
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