Is new Gottheimer campaign commercial a “hate crime”?
/By Rubashov
Whenever he gets caught in some hypocrisy or in an outright lie, Congressman Josh Gottheimer tries to deflect criticism from average folks by accusing them of something terrible. It’s a trick Gottheimer picked-up from his former boss, Bill Clinton, who trashed the reputations of the women he forced himself upon.
Gottheimer calls his Right-of-Center critics “extremists” and accuses his Left-of-Center critics of “anti-Semitism”. It seems he has a pejorative for everyone.
Think back to January of this year, when he tried to pin the “anti-Semitism” label on the Left-of-Center Working Families Party. The New Jersey Globe reported it:
Assembly Speaker Pro-Tempore Gordon Johnson has asked the Bergen County Prosecutor to investigate a September 2021 incident where a protestor allegedly screamed “Jew” at Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) as a possible hate crime.
In a speech at Rutgers University last month, Gottheimer claimed that a member of the Working Families Party hurled the anti-Semitic slur at him at a Glen Rock event with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. Raimundo is backing up Gottheimer’s allegation.
Working Families state director Sue Altman said last month that her group reviewed footage from the protest and interviewed several participants.
“To be absolutely clear, if that ever happened at a WFP event, the person would have been rebuked instantly and asked to leave,” Altman said. “However, we do not believe Gottheimer’s explosive allegation ever occurred.”
Johnson wants the organization to dig deeper.
Well, the Times of Israel published a piece that dug so deep it got to the bottom of this so-called “hate crime”. It is written by Dr. Russell Miller, a research psychologist at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and adjunct assistant professor of Children and Youth Studies at Brooklyn College.
Dr. Miller is also a journalist who has published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, New York, Ha'aretz, and Corriere della Sera. Dr. Miller’s column is titled: “I called Josh Gottheimer a Jew – it wasn’t a slur.” Dr. Miller’s column begins:
A couple of weeks ago, David-Seth Kirshner, the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, in Closter, New Jersey published a commentary here on the indisputable truth that even among the most well-meaning, compassionate, and socially engaged, there can be people who hate. His impetus? The charge by US Congressman. Josh Gottheimer that a progressive adversary, the Working Families Party, is sheltering an antisemite.
The piece rehashed Rep. Gottheimer’s claim that at a rally in September in support of “Build Back Better,” President Biden’s social services bill, a WFP member attacked the “reputable and respected Congressman” with the Jew-hating epithet “Jew.”
There’s only one problem. The claim is patently false – and Gottheimer almost certainly has to know that. Anyone following this phony blood libel would know it’s false. And how am I so certain it’s false? I’m the “attacker.”
The first time Gottheimer mentioned the supposed antisemitic attack was on December 13 at Rutgers University, three months after the fact. Since then, he’s speechified, fundraised and called in chits around the WFP’s alleged antisemitism. The US Secretary of Commerce signed on. A New Jersey state senator demanded a hate-crime investigation. The ADL announced, “we take him at his word.” Rabbi Kirshner came forward as character witness.
Meanwhile, the WFP scoured its ranks to find the offender. I was late to hear of this; I’m not a member. But as soon as I did, I contacted a reporter and “confessed” on a national podcast. That was four days before Rabbi Kirshner’s indictment of the WFP.
As I told that reporter, like Josh Gottheimer, I’m a Democrat and, as my grandmother would say, oich a yid – also a Jew. Gottheimer has to have known this all along. Rabbi Kirshner may not have, because the Congressman conveniently neglects to report the full sentence I spoke last September — at precisely the place and time he’s vouched the slur was slung. The moment was heated, so my reconstruction of the syntax may be off, but it was something like, “Josh, as a Jew, it’s a shanda that you’re blocking Build Back Better.”
That’s right, “a shanda,” as generations of Ashkenazic Jews have cried in Yiddish: A disgrace. That’s not Jew hating. That’s Jewish shaming. That was one Jew addressing another in a time-honored voice.
If Gottheimer heard “Jew,” he would have almost certainly heard “shanda.” If he heard “shanda,” he would have certainly known his attacker was anything but antisemitic.
Now, the record does show Gottheimer has memory issues. At Rutgers, he claimed several of us were jeering “Jew!” Subsequently, he revised his recollection to one. As a research psychologist, I can understand how, hit where it hurts, his mind might have reframed the scene. I can only assume my podcast appearance jogged his memory since his office has since refused comment. Meanwhile, it appears he’s buying Facebook ads to keep Rabbi Kirshner’s condemnation afloat.
As for the rabbi, in the worrisome week after Colleyville, he might well have missed my interview and subsequent coverage in the Jewish press. Odds are Gottheimer’s team, busy fibbing on Facebook, failed to brief him on my clarification, which surely would have brought him relief.
But by the time his piece went public, no informed observer could believe the Working Families Party, or even a stray antisemite, was the source of the telltale monosyllable.
You can access the entire column at the Times of Israel:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-called-josh-gottheimer-a-jew-it-wasnt-a-slur/
Note how Gottheimer’s team appears to willfully misrepresent what was actually said in an effort to label someone “anti-Semitic”. As we will see, it works the same when Gottheimer is trying to label someone an “extremist”.
Gottheimer calls his Right-of-Center critics “extremists” and accuses his Left-of-Center critics of “anti-Semitism”. It seems he has a pejorative for everyone.
In Gottheimer’s latest campaign commercial, his team tries to label Frank Pallotta an "extremist" by using a quote he made in August of 2020 about the Oath Keepers group and then applying it to the actions of that group on January 6, 2021. Using this same tactic, would it be okay to apply the positive things many elected officials said about Democrat consutant Sean Caddle, as if is was commentary on him after he admitted to having someone murdered? Using the Gottheimer rule, it would be okay. So, maybe they will.
The Gottheimer team then claimed that GOP challenger Frank Pallotta used the term “manslaughter” to describe all abortion – when, in fact, Pallotta was describing the late-term, day-of-birth abortion laws supported by Gottheimer and signed into law in New Jersey by Governor Phil Murphy. Here is the exact statement, made by Pallotta, that the Gottheimer team used for their commercial:
“Advances in modern medical science expanded fetal viability even as politicians like Josh Gottheimer ignored science and pushed for laws that went in the opposite direction and essentially legalized manslaughter.
Roe v. Wade was founded on language that was nowhere in the Constitution, and it featured the usurpation of the elected legislatures' role in determining public policy by the unelected judiciary. We now have the opportunity for real bipartisan reform on the laws that regulate abortion. An opportunity to follow medical science in drafting those reforms.
Instead of following medical science, Congressman Gottheimer and his allies have pursued a wholly ideological agenda of more and more extreme abortion laws - including partial-birth abortion and abortion for any reason up until the moment of birth.”
Of course, Gottheimer and his campaign team are lying because they know that “partial-birth abortion and abortion for any reason up until the moment of birth” are unpopular and do not poll very well.
But the real shocker in the commercial is the Gottheimer team’s use of anti-Italian stereotypes in an attempt to conjure up the image of a Mafia crime figure. Darkening Pallotta’s image and using a photograph in which he is wearing dark glasses? We would object just as sternly if somebody used a photograph of a Jewish candidate wearing a yarmulke.
Remember how the state’s Democrats complained and hurled accusations of “hate” when then congressional challenger Andy Kim was stereotyped using the image of fish and a font associated with Asian restaurants? Would these Democrats have us believe that Italian-Americans are less worthy of their support?
So, is this commercial – paid for by Josh Gottheimer’s campaign and approved by him – a "hate crime"? Or is it simply a matter of poor judgment and poor taste?
