Former President Jimmy Carter’s people better be in spin control mode today once this report from World Net Daily’s Jerusalem Bureau gets greater circulation:
Former President Jimmy Carter once complained there were “too many Jews” on the government’s Holocaust Memorial Council, Monroe Freedman, the council’s former executive director, told WND in an exclusive interview.
Freedman, who served on the council during Carter’s term as president, also revealed a noted Holocaust scholar who was a Presbyterian Christian was rejected from the council’s board by Carter’s office because the scholar’s name “sounded too Jewish.”
(I could submit my name, since the name “Gandelman” sounds Italian..). AND further down:
“If I was memorializing Martin Luther King, I would expect a significant number of board members to be African American. If I was memorializing Native American figures I’d expect a lot of Native Americans to be on the board.
“I do not for a moment consider it inappropriate to build a Holocaust council with a significant majority of the board being Jewish,” Freedman stated.
This kind of news report is sort of like “when did you stop beating your wife.” Carter can (and most likely will) deny it but the fact it’s out there means it automatically sticks, no matter what his spokespeople say. Could there be another explanation? Perhaps the idea was that it should have a broader representation. Etc…
No matter what, though, Carter is not going to win a B’nai Brith Leader of the Year Award due to the controversies over his book, his stance on the Palestinians, and the accuracy of some things in the book. This report will likely generate more talk-show buzz…and be further confirmation to some (even when he denies it) that the Carter smile masked some clear biases.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.