This is a very strange election and some of the attacks being thrown around now sound like they were drawn from a crazy person's box of randomly clipped letters.
The entire "New York Values" exchange during the GOP debate was a stupid moment, but online lefties have somehow managed to make it even worse and dumber. The JTA, a lefty wire service which feeds content to Jewish papers that don't know any better, has a piece that claims Ted Cruz's line about New York values is "anti-semitic".
This makes no sense because Trump isn't Jewish. The original source for the claim appears to be the Gawker hate machine, which regularly runs anti-Semitic material. Like 90 percent of everything on Gawker, the claim makes no sense at all. The post itself claims that Cruz meant "Jewish, black, gay values" whatever the hell those are. Black people are not particularly pro-gay. And a rising number of New York City Jews are Orthodox and not pro-gay either. Also Jews and black people in New York City don't exactly get along brilliantly, see Crown Heights Pogrom.
Someone named Mark Silk, who is the Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, claims that it comes down to money. "But that “focus around money and the media”? That was “New York = Jews” all the way. Don’t kid yourself."
Except that the identification of New York with big finance dates back to the 18th century. The first American split involved Hamilton standing in for big New York money. And it had nothing to do with Jews as there weren't very many of them around at the time. New York has been a financial capital long before it hosted a large Jewish population. If anybody knows the history of that, it's Ted Cruz.
Chase was created in New York in 1799 as an Aaron Burr scam to enroll more voters. The Occupy Wall Street stuff is as old as the American revolution. Take a closer look at Rhode Island history around the period.
Don't kid yourself.
But more mainstream media outlets have also climbed on board. The New York Times suggested that, "Similar loaded phrases about New York in the past have been thinly veiled cover for anti-Semitism."
Roger Stone claimed, "Two of my Jewish friends said this had the whiff of anti-Semitism."
But anti-Semitism toward whom exactly? Donald Trump?
I realize that in this political climate, reason went out the window a few months ago. But even by the low standards we're in now, this still makes no sense. Trump using 9/11 as cover on the subject of New York was on the iffy side. Using Jews as cover though is downright insane.
Jews were not the subject of this conversation. It's not even money. It's rather obviously social liberalism. It's the same way Pelosi was hit with San Francisco values line. Saturday Night Live even turned it into a skit. Cruz was pointing up Trump's views on gay rights and abortion. His attack though was too indirect leading to this current mess in which we're discussing 9/11 and Jews. For some reason.