Obama: The Hysteria and the Reality

(Pictured: America's next First Family. What is it about them that frightens some people?)

I supported John McCain in the presidential campaign just concluded, and given the choice I would do so again.

Having said that, anyone who wasn't profoundly moved by Barack Obama’s victory rally and speech on Tuesday night has to be either emotionally dead or devoid of any appreciation of just how historic a moment it was.

The tears of joy and disbelief, the looks of wonder and hope, on all those faces in that crowd -- particularly, for obvious reasons, the black faces -- were enough to offset the despair I felt the next morning on reading through the shamefully racist and abjectly ignorant comments posted by visitors to certain Orthodox websites.

There are things about Obama I don’t like – he’s way too liberal for my political taste, and he failed, in my opinion, to convincingly repudiate or even explain his past relationships with a handful of troubling individuals. But McCain had his own skeletons and unanswered questions, as do all politicians – indeed, as do we all – and the fact is there exists nothing in Obama’s history to indicate any hostility to Jews or Israel (unless making mention of Palestinian suffering is enough to have a speaker fitted for a swastika armband and storm trooper boots).

How, then, to explain the following comments, unfortunately just a small sampling of what has appeared since Tuesday on the sites alluded to above? (Errors of spelling, punctuation, and syntax all in the originals.)

* [America] has finally gotten what it deserves. “the people have voted”…now we know the garbage that surrounds us.

* Wake up hes a muslim with muslim friends keep your eyes open and passports near

* Rabosai, everyone should make sure they have an updated passport and I think tomorrow should be a Yom Tefilah and maybe even a fast day. This is very, very scary….

* Obama is an arab for crying out loud. his campaign was funded by terrorist organizations….i agree with all those who are planning to move to israel. i personally just looked up nefeshbnefesh for some suggestions.

* Unfortunately, there are many comparisons to Germany circa 1936. We both have an elected leader from out of nowhere, with no track record, which has people swooning….everyone out there has read “The Protocols of Zion”, so they know that Jews run the banks.

* Let’s wait and see what happens. Yes, I know people are scared, I am also scared. My grandmother she should live and be well, was in Auschwitz. I have always kept passports for myself and my family and some cash on the side. You never know, you never know.

* I will walk out of my shul if/when they make the customary brocha for the president of the USA. Do you realize that Obama wants to force Orthodox shuls to perform weddings between man and man?

Now, I am fully aware, from the letters and e-mails I receive at The Jewish Press, that Orthodox Jews are as susceptible as anyone else to Internet innuendo and urban legends, even if the lies or rumors in question have long been debunked. But it’s still a shock to the system to confront the hysteria and paranoia, the willful – no, the prideful – ignorance conveyed in such a crude and ugly manner and posted for public consumption, yet.

One can be a conservative who’s convinced beyond doubt that McCain would have made a better president than Obama and at the same time recognize and appreciate the transcendent nature of the election results and what they say about America.

As Commentary’s John Podhoretz wrote on Tuesday night: “America, it appears, is on the verge of electing a black man as its president…. the immensity of this single cultural moment dwarfs almost any other in my lifetime. Its positive social impact is incalculable; it was only eight years ago that Al Gore traveled to Harlem to kiss Al Sharpton’s ring…. Sharpton was, at that point, by default the most important black politician in America. Obama’s ascension to the White House, if it does nothing else, may at last bring down the curtain on race hucksters like Sharpton, whose power has always been rooted in the political alienation of inner-city blacks.”

And as The Atlantic’s Ross Douthat noted, “…Obama has just been elected president of a nation in which he could have been bought and sold as a slave just generations ago. I don’t think there are any words adequate to the occasion of America electing its first black president, so I’ll just say this: This may be a bleak day for the Republican party and for conservatism, but come what may in the years ahead, it's great for our country. Barack Obama deserves congratulations tonight, but so does the nation he’s about to govern. We’ve come a long, long way."

Oh, and those who have their bags packed and their passports ready in anticipation of the coming deluge might consider this: the election of a black man as president should make Jews feel more secure in America rather than less.

African Americans have endured infinitely greater prejudice, hardship and discrimination – slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, etc. -- than have Jewish Americans, and yet earlier this week the nation entrusted its highest office to a black man. Not only did Obama win tens of millions of white votes, he carried states where not so long ago blacks were prevented by law from using the same public facilities as whites and actually took their lives into their hands simply for attempting to exercise, as American citizens, their right to vote.

America has arrived at the point where a black man will sit in the Oval Office while his black wife will do whatever it is First Ladies do and their black children will roam the White House and play in the Rose Garden. If the country has come this far in its comfort level with and acceptance of blacks, how much more so is that the case with Jews, who already for decades now have been the nation's most successful and influential ethnic subgroup?