If you call them, remember that you are not talking to an anti-Semite or racist, but to a well-meaning and enthusiastic employee (or volunteer) who does not know about Barack Obama's connections to prominent anti-Semites and racists like Al Sharpton and his National Action Network (involved with the burning of a Jewish-owned store in Harlem), an individual (Allan Houston) who, with a Knicks teammate, effectively called Jews "Christ Killers," Jeremiah Wright, George Soros, and MoveOn.org. Be polite; you want to persuade the person at the other end, not abuse him/her.
We just called the Obama campaign at (866) 675-2008 in response to yet another e-mail in which Barack Obama asked for our support, and talked about the success of his <a href="http://netwmd.com/blog/2007/06/07/1762">Walk for Change</a> event last Saturday. We hope that any Walk for Change volunteers who collected money or financial pledges from the people they contacted were sufficiently ethical to retrace their steps and return the money when they learned about Obama's blatant connections with hate organizations and hate mongers who promote anti-Semitism, racism, and other forms of hatred that have no place in our society.
The Obama volunteer's response to our concerns was that Obama is not a racist or anti-Semite, that she had other calls to take, and if we didn't want to receive Obama's e-mails, we should unsubscribe. (We never subscribed to them in the first place, although we did e-mail the Obama campaign with our concerns about his association with Al Sharpton and his National Action Network, and MoveOn.org.) We received, in addition to unsolicited bulk e-mail, a flippant response to the effect that "people can disagree without being disagreeable." <strong>Bottom line: Obama and his campaign manager David Ploufe are telling us that they will associate with whatever Jew-haters, racists, and Catholic-baiters they please as long as the money keeps flowing in.</strong>
We told the person at Obama headquarters politely but firmly that we will be unable to vote for Obama next year no matter whom the Republicans put up, because of his open association with racists, anti-Semites, and other prominent bigots. These include explicitly and most prominently Al Sharpton, whose followers were responsible for two incidents of anti-Semitic violence (Crown Heights and Freddy's Fashion Mart) in which people were killed. We made it clear that Sharpton and his people had used racist and/or anti-Semitic terms in both incidents, and that Sharpton's followers had yelled "Kill the Jews" in the Crown Heights incident. Yankel Rosenbaum was the Jew whom they killed.
Plenty of other things can be said about Sharpton's prolific use of derogatory terms for white people, Jews, gay people ("Greek homos"), and even Black people whom he dislikes (specifically the N word), although we did not have time to discuss them with the Obama campaign's representative this afternoon.
We added that Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright consorted with Louis Farrakhan, who called Judaism a "gutter religion" and the Pope "the Antichrist." (The two went to Libya to visit Moammar Khadafy, although we did not mention that. Also note that Al Sharpton said that Farrakhan is not an anti-Semite.) Furthermore, Obama accepted money from a fund raiser hosted by a former Knicks player (Allan Houston) who, with a teammate, effectively called Jews "Christ Killers." They said, to be precise, that Jews were responsible for Jesus' death.
Finally there was the matter of <a href="http://www.stentorian.com/MoveOn/">MoveOn.org</a>, which published a derogatory picture of Pope Benedict while at the same time welcoming anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic hate speech at its Action Forum. Obama appeared at a MoveOn PAC event.
The Obama representative nonetheless denied that Obama consorts with hate mongers, and was very unapologetic about his conduct. As we all know, "denial" is not a river in Egypt. <strong>The key point is, however, that Obama's people will deny in the face of overwhelming evidence, including pictures of Obama arm in arm with a prominent racist and anti-Semite, that Obama consorts with hate mongers. It is now eminently clear that money is more important to Barack Obama than principles or ethics, and that his phony smile is nothing more than hype.</strong>