Jack Ross, posting on The American Conservative‘s blog, has taken a close look at Jennifer Rubin’s back-story.
Jack, who has a book coming out on Elmer Berger and American anti-Zionism, has called attention to a comment left by a reader of an earlier post on Rubin — The Washington Post’s newest, and most hawkish, blogger. The commenter offers some interesting insights into the life that Rubin left behind when she moved from Hollywood to Virginia.
The commenter writes:
I knew Jennifer fairly well for a number of years. She worked at DreamWorks and DreamWorks Animation. She worked with Jeffrey Katzenberg on issues and I had lunch with her lots of times. (I’m the labor rep for the Animation Guild, Local 839 IATSE and she was on the company side. You tend to get to know your opposite number.)
We talked about the 2004 campaign endlessly. She was always funny, with sharp observations. I never got the impression she was anything but a Democrat (as am I.) Maybe she was taking on that coloration because Jeffrey K. is a Big Time Dem, or she genuinely felt that way, or she had a religious conversion. She was mildly critical of some of Kerry’s campaign moves during the ’04 campaign, but she wasn’t in the Bush camp.
It’s somewhat startling to me that she is now hard right, but stranger things have happened. Whether she sees this as where the money and fame is, or what she honestly believes, or something in-between, I know not.
Ross observes:
To be sure, one can only assume that even as a solid Kerry supporter she was in the Chuck Schumer/Brad Sherman camp on foreign policy. Yet she has certainly gone the extra mile in changing many of the views one associates with a good Jewish Democrat in her adoring embrace of Sarah Palin. And this is what forces me and others to conclude that there are much deeper, darker pathologies with this woman than simply being mugged by reality on Israel. As Daniel Luban points out in the above link, a pathological hatred of Obama is at the heart of it all, so frankly, simple racism can hardly be ruled out.
“simple racism can hardly be ruled out.”
I haven’t read Jennifer Rubin but based on what you’ve written here – this seems to be a very low blow.
You have not basis for saying it but you state it like it is a fact. It makes you look dumb.
I read the Luban article. Hating Obama (I don’t) doesn’t make you a racist anymore than hating Bush made you a racist.
That’s politics. It’s war by other means. Sometimes the stakes are big and there is often a lot of animosity involved. Wake up.