Jim DeMint “Takes Care of the Pennies,” Just Like the Jews

Countdown to a ton of people saying there's no way that could possibly be construed as racist in 3..2..1...

Wow. I didn't even think anyone thought that way anymore. What cave did they crawl out of, anyway?

Countdown to a ton of people saying there's no way that could possibly be construed as racist in 3..2..1...

It perpetuates a stereotype (though arguably a positive one) and could be construed as racist, but to me it seems pretty minor. Mainly a chance for the usual suspects to be indignant about something today.

Jewish isn't a race. So yes, it is not racist. It's antisemitic.
My goodness. These goobers in the County GOP need therapy.

Countdown to a ton of liberals saying this is indicative of ALL Republicans in 3..2..1...

I guess my brain is totally fried. I always like the belief, "If you watch your pennies the dollars will soon follow."

I'm not sure if that's a Jewish saying or not. Also I'm not sure how the statement is racist. Unless someone does NOT believe that fiscal responsibility is good and attributes that to Jews.

Also I really don't understand this, “By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.”

I thought earmarks were in bills. The Republicans are stupid to say this statement if anyone bothers to think about it.

Should I just call it a night and crawl under the covers? Is my brain really that tired? What am I missing?

I'm not sure if that's a Jewish saying or not. Also I'm not sure how the statement is racist. Unless someone does NOT believe that fiscal responsibility is good and attributes that to Jews.

SBSF some would say this perpetuates a stereotype that Jews are greedy and penny-pinching, others would say it's a positive stereotype that they are thrifty and careful. Just depends on your predilection to be offended or not.

DaGoat, thanks.

*shrug* pretty minor, like using the term "redneck" or "good old boy".

It's not my intention to divert from the topic, but what I find interesting is that I don't hear anyone criticizing the Democratic State Senator (Bakari Sellers) for advocating more pork-barrel spending.

Federal taxpayer dollars should be used for national purposes, not state purposes. If DeMint refuses to bring back the bacon to his state due to a philosophical opposition to earmarks (and I don't know if this is entirely the case; I'm only going by Sellers' article), then he should be encouraged, not criticized.

Sellers makes his criticism of DeMint by defending Section 302a of the 1974 Budget Act, which sets discretionary spending levels of appropriations bills before the politicians even propose their federally financed pet projects. As Sellers points out:

After these spending amounts are set, the appropriations deliberations begin. This is important, because it means that refusing to request or secure earmarks for one's constituents does not save a penny of taxpayer dollars.

Think about the way this process works. First politicians decide how much they're going to spend. Then they come up with pet projects until all the allocated money is used up. It's completely backwards! What politicians should is coming up with a list of projects that are absolute priorities and are national in scope. In an ear of skyrocketing deficits, the last thing politicians should be doing is tacking on earmarks in an attempt to fund pet projects in their own state.

As always, pundits and the media are going to play up the whole "were the chairmen's comments antisemitic?" story rather than paying attention to the more important problem, which is the fiscal irresponsibility of the pork-barrel spenders in congress during times of ballooning deficits.

Hey StockBoy -- Maybe I've read too much pre-WWII Nazi propaganda in my studies. You see tons of racist political cartoons with Jews with the giant kinky hair and huge bulging noses as they run through the streets with bags of money. You know, with devil horns. The "Jews are cheap" stereotype is extremely prevalent, has a horribly ugly history, and no, it's not a "positive" stereotype.

The problem with being a bigot is that you are never quite sure how to tell a joke about "lesser" people, even if you mean it in a good way. They were trying to use "Jew" in a good way, but failed badly.

Yes, I encountered the stereotype more than once when I was a college student in the Midwest. One of the interesting things about stereotypes is that they are often contradictory. For example, Jews are stingy; Jews are greedy. Jews are penny-pinchers; Jews are vulgar and crass.

There really isn't any such thing as a "positive" stereotype. "Positive" stereotypes are just the flip side of negative stereotypes. "Jews know how to take care of the pennies so the dollars take care of themselves" may sound like a compliment, but it's surprisingly easy to go from that to "Jews are miserly and stingy." Shylock in The Merchant of Venice is the personification of the "Jews are thrifty... miserly... will do anything to save a buck... will have their pound of flesh" phenomenon.

It's not my intention to divert from the topic, but what I find interesting is that I don't hear anyone criticizing the Democratic State Senator (Bakari Sellers) for advocating more pork-barrel spending.

Of course not, its all about partisan sound bites not policy silly. People spend a lot of time looking through all the information on policy to find those precious partisan sound bites, we should appreciate all that effort to look past what will effect us and get on to the Jerry Springer shock bits.

Of course on the other hand one could mention former remarks of Secretary of State Hilliary Clinton to political operative Paul Fray, who according to "State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton" and verified by Fray and three witnesses when she said to him, "You f****** Jew b*****." Funny thing is Fray isn't Jewish.

http://aman.members.sonic.net/clintons.html

Leonidas, while there may be some nuggets of truth in the website you linked to it's so obviously slanted and partisan as to make it worthless. While I doubt Merwin and Ulmer meant their comments in a negative way they were politically tone deaf and should have known better. While you're right that liberals seem to be clueless about the logs in their own eyes, it doesn't justify conservatives keeping the ones in theirs.

Right on (is that allowed these days?). Anyway, you're right. Too many keeping their eyes on the hole and not the donuts.

A penny saved is a penny earned.
Benjamin Franklin

Who wants to pick on this guy?

As a lantern in the distant darkness, such comments lead the way to the soul of the speaker. False praise, thy name is bias.

"The problem with being a bigot is that you are never quite sure how to tell a joke about "lesser" people, even if you mean it in a good way. They were trying to use "Jew" in a good way, but failed badly."


Well said, Shannon.

We must keep in mind that the Tora-Talmud (Old Testament), as well as Leviticus practice, advises Jews to be frugal with money and to be good stewards of business. This isn't God telling them to be "stingy or vulgar". It is God telling them to excercise thrift and sound business practices. Their very culture has this as a trait. It's a good one. It's like the Norse being great navigators, or the Chinese being efficient. It is woven into their cultural fabric.

Of course, as Kathy correctly noticed, any GOOD quality in a culture can be put into the negative, and all prejudices are wrong. Just because the Jewish culture states to be frugal, doesn't mean ALL Jews are.

Well, referring to the thifty Scotch isn't going to work, and hasn't worked for several years, given Scotland's contemporary lefty reputation (as exhibited by the Scottish National Party, for example).

Thanks for posting this Kathy. I was hoping ot post it myself. These kind of stereotypes are deeply offensive. But I have to take issue with your closing remark, i.e. "This is why reactionary right-wing politics is not good for the Jews, as we Jews like to say." But after Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA)'s anti-semitic remarks a few years ago, should I have said, "This is why conspiracy-spinning left-wing politics is not good for the Jews, as we Jews like to say?"

Via CNN: "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this," said Moran, whose remarks were first reported by the Reston Connection newspaper. "The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should."

One the intellectual traps of opinion journalism is looking only at the extremists on the other side, then generalizing.

Thanks, all. I can see how some people may make the leap from "being frugal" to "being miserly and greedy", which would lead to negative stereotyping. Though I don't make such a leap in this case. That's why I had difficulty understanding how this frugalness could lead to a stereotyping of Jews- it's (being thrifty or greedy as a "Jewish" trait) just not something I believe. I can be dense too sometimes, especially around things that don't make sense..... though I admit stereotypes rarely "make sense".

My mother was born in 1926 and lived through the Great Depression. She is very careful with her money and taught my brother and me to be careful with money too. Mom has also always been generous and taught us to give to the community and anyone who is in less fortunate positons than us.

I can't help but notice that Mom thinks we spend too much money and yet I think many people spend WAY too much money. It seems that people in each generation away from the Great Depression spend more money than the previous generation.

Anyway I think it's a fine trait to spend money wisely. But that doesn't mean one is greedy or miserly.

Hey all, if anyone's still interested, I was able to find a few links about the history of the stereotype of Jews as miserly and greedy and cheap.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/na...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?page=...

http://judaism.suite101.com/article.cfm/why_jew...

My point is that this is an age-old stereotype, and it has most certainly *not* been seen as a good thing. The prevalence of Jewish people in industries like banking were part of the "The Jewish Question" and the so-called conspiracy of Jews to take over the world that Hitler used so many times in Mein Kamf. Ugly, ugly history here.

We must keep in mind that the Tora-Talmud (Old Testament), as well as Leviticus practice, advises Jews to be frugal with money and to be good stewards of business.

One: The Torah is not exactly the same as the Old Testament. The Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament::Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And the Talmud is not the Old Testament or the Bible at all. The Talmud is a collection of writings from rabbinic authorities, interpreting and giving extended opinions on Jewish law. Here is the article at Wikipedia about the Talmud.

Two: I would be most appreciative if you could provide a specific cite from Leviticus where the Jews are being advised to be frugal with money and good stewards of business.

There IS an historical explanation, or perhaps an historical origin would be better phrased, for the "Jews are money grubbers" stereotype, but to the best of my knowledge that origin is not Leviticus.

I did not know about that quote from Rep. Moran. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

You are absolutely right that anti-semitic stereotypes and opinions exist regardless of political affiliation. There are anti-semites on the left as well as on the right, unquestionably. So why did I indulge in that (admittedly snarky) dig at reactionary right-wing politics? Because there is a very well-defined and influential segment of the (Christian) religious right that rabidly supports their counterparts in Israel (hawkish, right-wing Israelis, and the right-wing government of Netanyahu) -- and they do this in the specific context of claiming to be oh so pro-Israel, and so shocked and appalled at the anti-Semitism of the Arab world, and they themselves are such strong supporters of the Jewish State's right to exist -- and meanwhile they are all a bunch of raging hypocrites. They "support" Israel for reasons of their own that have nothing to do with anti-Semitism or the Jewish people's right to their own nation. In fact, their motivations are rooted in quite the opposite ideology: it comes out of a very extreme "Christian Reconstructionist" ideology that is premised, actually, on the destruction and/or mass conversion of all Jews in the so-called "End Times." Yet, these are the very people who are the quickest to condemn even the most moderate and rational criticism of Israel's actions in its conflict with the Palestinians as "anti-Semitic." Even worse, they do not hesitate to call people like me -- who support a Palestinian state existing alongside the Jewish state, equal in rights and with security for both Israelis and Palestinians -- "self-hating Jews" or worse.

It's bad enough when that comes from other Jews, but it's truly insufferable when the same Southern Baptists and other right-wing Christian fundamentalists who hand out Christian materials at synagogues during the High Holy Days trying to convert Jews on the most sacred days of our religious calendar, have the NERVE to tell Jewish supporters of a two-state solution that we are "anti-Semitic" and/or "self-hating Jews."

So that's the explanation for my heightened sensitivity to anti-Semitic remarks coming from the reactionary right, although I do know that anti-Semitism also exists on the left, and among any number of Americans who are completely apolitical.

All of the above having been said, I should have made this personal context clearer than I did. I actually did not make it clear at all. I apologize for that.

Thank you for this, roro.

I meant "Leviticus" as in "Levites" or "Leviticus preists". Not the book in the Old Testament. You are much more learned in this arena, Kat. You tell me where it's found.

For the record, there is a difference between "money grubbers" and "those with good business sense". But stereotypes, period, are not a good thing.