Some seven years ago, I attended an annual convention of AIPAC, a lobbying group that promotes closer U.S. ties to Israel. The decision to attend had nothing to do with my support of Israel or looking to embrace AIPAC’s activities. In fact, my perception of AIPAC when I decided to attend was very negative based on what I read in the corporate media. I went because Cousins Rob and Jesse of Sleep Number fame were attending, and I thought it would be fun to hang out with them in the nation’s capital for a few days.
The convention profoundly changed my views about Israel and AIPAC. While Representatives Ilan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, respectively the recipients of the 2019 and 2023 Antisemite of the Year award, have questioned the “dual loyalty” of American Jews, AIPAC is a very patriotic organization focused on educating members about the workings of the U.S. government. Indeed, unlike protests held in Tlaib’s neck of the Michigan woods, if an AIPAC attendee dared to shout “Death to America” the consequences would be quick and severe.
Kamala Harris, then California’s newly elected senator, was one of the featured speakers. I was excited to hear her because my source of news in those days was the corporate media and Harris had received universally positive coverage. Although I was predisposed to like Harris, the first word out of Harris’s mouth immediately soured me.
“Chuppa,” is how she began her address.
A chuppa is a canopy under which traditional Jewish marriage ceremonies are held. It symbolizes the creation of a new Jewish home about to be created. Harris wanted the audience to know that her husband, Doug Emhoff, was Jewish and that she was married under a chuppa. I viewed the anecdote as patronizing, and it betrayed an ignorance of what AIPAC was all about.
Not all AIPAC members are Jewish, and being a Jewish politician doesn’t ensure AIPAC’s support. AIPAC actively supported Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens in her 2022 contest against Andy Levin, the Jewish son and nephew of prominent former Michigan Congressmen who proudly called Tlaib his “comrade” and repeatedly denied that she was a Jew hater. As an aside, there were other excellent reasons to run Levin out of office, including allowing the decline of Beaumont Health, a once highly respected regional hospital in Levin’s former district that’s now the hemorrhoids ridden rump of Grand Rapids-based Corewell Health.
My skepticism of Harris was further fueled by the breakout session I attended featuring her foreign affairs advisor. I don’t recall the woman’s name, but I remember she previously worked for other failed political candidates, and I was taken aback by how uninspiring and unimpressive she was. The woman also didn’t strike me as a very nice person.
I’ve learned in the intervening years that my skepticism about Harris’s chuppa introduction was very well founded. Emhoff is possibly a very proud Jew who prefers getting married under a chuppa, but fostering Jewish homes isn’t his thing. Emhoff’s first wife wasn’t Jewish and his daughter Ella not only has disavowed she’s Jewish, she also supports the pro-Palestinian movement, having posted a link to her Instagram calling for donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The organization has deep ties to terrorism and the administration of her “Momala,” as Ella calls her step mom, cut off funding to the program in January after receiving evidence of their complicity in Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel.
Harris also has been an avid champion of the Black Lives Matter movement, which long has advocated rabid anti-Israel positions, with some leaders advocating the abolishment of the country. BLM’s Chicago chapter celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of more the 1,000 persons, posting on social media an image of a paraglider with the Palestinian flag as a backdrop captioned, “I stand with Palestine.”
While liberal Jews celebrate Harris choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate because of his progressive policies and feigning support for Israel, the supposed “mensch” has been an avid supporter of Ilan Omar, who, in turn, has endorsed Walz’s selection, as have other Jew hating “Squad” members.
“By the way, (Walz’s) best buddy is Ilhan Omar, for my landsmen out there,” former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, who is now the national chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told a New York talk radio show on Tuesday, using a Yiddish expression that refers to fellow Jews. “You have somebody who supports antisemites, who supports Ilhan Omar.”
Until just a few days ago, the corporate media was reporting that Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor Josh Shapiro was a shoo-in to become Harris’s running mate, but at the 11th hour she picked Walz, reportedly because of the Democratic party’s antisemitic left wing. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose Jew hatred is well known, took some credit for Harris’s decision to dump Shapiro in favor of Walz.
Harris has a long history of pandering to the audiences she addresses. In 2021, while visiting a COVID-19 lab at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, she feigned a French accent that was widely ridiculed. More recently, she was mocked for feigning a southern accent at a rally in Georgia.
I’m not alone in my disdain for Harris’s identity politics. Among her critics was her father Donald, a retired economics professor at Stanford from whom Harris is estranged. As reported in this 2019 New Yorker feature, the elder Harris was appalled when Kamala appeared on an urban radio show and explained why she supported legalizing marijuana.
“Half my family’s from Jamaica – are you kidding me?” Harris replied, laughing.
Kamala’s father gave a statement to a Jamaican-diaspora website, which the New Yorker linked to but now connects to an unavailable page.
“My deceased parents must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” Donald Harris wrote. “Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.”
The New Yorker provided some insight as to possibly why Harris didn’t display more sensitivity to her father’s Jamaican roots.
Harris’ parents divorced when she was about 7 and her India-born mother got custody of Kamala and her sister. Neither spent much time with their father after the divorce.
“Their experience and relationship with blackness is through being raised in these communities in Berkeley and Oakland, and not through the lens of being Caribbean,” Kamala’s niece, Meena, told the New Yorker.
The Economist characterized Donald Harris as “unabashedly Marxist,” which is notable given Harris’s early embracement of the Black Lives Movement. As reported by Charles Gasparino in his just released book, Go Woke Go Broke, founding BLM members Patrisse Cullors and Aliicia Garza, characterized themselves as “trained Marxists.”
Doug Emhoff’s Toxic Masculinity
Whatever happened to the #MeToo movement decrying power imbalances and the marketing folks at Gilette warning about “toxic masculinity?” A powerful entertainment lawyer having an affair with his daughter’s nanny and possibly impregnating her strikes me as an imbalance of power and the sort of toxic masculinity that might create more of a lather than Gilette’s shaving creams.
If your primary source of information is the corporate media, it’s likely you are unaware that America’s second “gentleman” confirmed a Daily Mail report that he cheated on his first wife Kerstin and had an affair with his daughter’s teacher and nanny, Najin Naylor, that led to their divorce. The Daily Mail reported that he impregnated Naylor and that she gave up the baby, details Emhoff didn’t confirm or deny. Tellingly, Kerstin and Naylor are both blue-eyed goddess-like blondes.
In the Hollywood circles Emhoff moved in, sleeping with your child’s nanny or family housekeeper isn’t all that uncommon. Among the Hollywood stars known or alleged to have slept with their nannies or housekeepers are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jude Law, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams, and Gavin Rossdale.
In an interview last year with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, Emhoff fashioned himself as the epitome of the modern-day sensitive man and openly decried “toxic masculinity.”
“We’ve kind of confused what it means to be a man, what it means to be masculine. You’ve got this trope out there that you’ve got to be tough and angry and lash out to be strong. It’s just the opposite,” he told Capehart. “Strength is how you show your love for people. Strength is how you are for people and how you have their back. And how you stick up for other people and [push back] against bullies.”
Supposedly Emhoff’s first wife has forgiven his transgressions as she, Kamala, and Doug supposedly get along better than the cast of the 70s sitcom Three’s Company. Harris was previously quoted as saying the blended family was “almost too functional.”
In the case of Schwarzenegger, the former champion body builder publicly fessed up to his affair with his housekeeper, calling it his “f-k-up.” He maintains a close relationship with his extramarital child, Joseph, who also is a competitive bodybuilder.
If Emhoff impregnated Naylor, it’s not clear if she had a baby or possibly an abortion. Emhoff told NBC News in May that he wants more men to become involved in advocating abortion rights, arguing it’s a “family issue” not just a women’s issue. Emhoff can also help Harris capture the gay community vote, as a recent segment of Queer News Tonight would indicate.
I place considerably more trust in the judgments and perceptions of Queer News Tonight than I do Harris’s fawning corporate media. As well, when writing about Democrats I pride myself on being especially inclusive and cite media that targets the constituencies they prefer to champion.
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