Huckabee's Blood Libel?

George Will needs to simmer down:

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee's role in the '70s Show involves blending Jimmy Carter's ostentatious piety with Nixon's knack for oblique nastiness. "Despicable" and "appalling" evidence of a "gutter campaign" -- that is how The Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, Mass., characterized this from Sunday's New York Times Magazine profile of Huckabee: "'Don't Mormons,' he asked in an innocent voice, 'believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?'"

Imagine someone asking "in an innocent voice" this: "Don't Jews use the blood of gentile children to make matzoth for Passover?" Such a smarmy injection of the "blood libel," an ancient canard of anti-Semitism, into civic discourse would indelibly brand the injector as a bigot with contempt for the public's ability to decode bigotry.

I, too, think the Jesus-Lucifer dig was inappropriate (for reasons that I get into a forthcoming episode of The Table - try to contain your excitement!). But it's the equivalent of the blood libel? Seriously? An abstruse theological point that makes Mormonism seem weird and possibly creepy is the equivalent of saying that Jews like to drink your kids' blood? Moreover, what Huckabee said isn't even technically a libel: The Jews don't actually use the blood of gentile children to make Passover matzoh, so far as I know, whereas Mormons do, in fact, believe that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers - not necessarily in the sense that most people understand the term, but in a sense that goes to the heart of the LDS Church's theological differences with orthodox Christianity. Raising the point in the way Huckabee did may have been disingenuous and deliberately sleazy (though an interview with the Times Magazine seems like an odd venue to embark on a subtle anti-Mormon smear campaign pitched to Iowan evangelicals). But The Protocols of the Elders of Deseret it wasn't.

Update: The "so far as I know" was a (possibly misguided) attempt at sarcasm. To clarify: The Jews don't actually use the blood of Christian children at Passover, full stop, no caveat appended.

Comments

So far as you know?!?

Posted by Noah Millman | December 20, 2007 11:48 AM

Ross Douthat doesn't actually have dozens of bodies of adolescent boys buried in his basement, so far as I know.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 20, 2007 12:20 PM

The trouble is the Mormons do believe Jesus and the Devil are brothers produced along with everyone else by some sort of relationship between God the Father and one of his plural wives on a planet near a star called Kolob . Mitt Romney must understand that Christians as well as many non Christians find such views deeply offensive .

Posted by Andrew Price | December 20, 2007 1:21 PM

More on Romney’s Leadership check out these links:
www.massresistance.org and http://rightsmart.blogspot.com/

See this video for Mitt Romney caught lying!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DJO_XuM4eM

all this rhetoric is follishnes and an intent denial to dismiss truth. The Demo-wacks have had control over congress for 2 years now and have done NOTHING but fund pork barrel projects and have not come close to making any kind of real progress that the promised their poor demo-wack supporters. There credibility is SHOT! and as for Huckabee... People fear that he will win, which he is... At this point I will vote for anybody other than a Demowack. i am so frustrated that I have changed party position and will vote Repub this year.

christmas is the celebration of the birth of jesus christ and if anyone do not want to celebrate it then don't but remember, each time you give a gift to someone else, you are mimicking the 3 wise men that gave gifts to jesus at his birth and most importantly, you are mimicking the giving factor that God gave his only begotten son to the world. So whether you formally ccelebrate or deny it, each gift given is a reflection of God Giving Christ to the earth as a gift. and i am happy to have received a merry christmas wish from a governmental official.. which that does not happen at all now a days! I am so proud of Huckabee i do not know what to do. He is a man of principle and he surely just sealed the deal with my vote. He will win and big he will, and while the pundits try to demise him, or his other political rivals try to make him look bad. They may want to look at the mirror at themselves. You got flip flopping mitt, dead fred, pimped out guiliani , no brain mccain, and “paul is crazy and deranged”!

And as for the Dems: you got Hell-ary that have sold her soul to the left party lobbyist in america, and you got chronic smoking Obama? which neither one has ANY experience in foreign policy. If it was not for Hell-ary having bill clinton last name, she would not even be known.

Huckabee is the sure winner and will win big. I can not wait for romney to get out of the race. i bet he will go back to hiring illegals to work in his yard. check more out about him at www.massresistance.org he is the biggest flake since kellogs!

Posted by sha | December 20, 2007 1:23 PM

The trouble is the Mormons do believe Jesus and the Devil are brothers produced along with everyone else by some sort of relationship between God the Father and one of his plural wives on a planet near a star called Kolob . Mitt Romney must understand that Christians as well as many non Christians find such views deeply offensive.

Ah yes, since a virgin birth is so much more resonable.....

Posted by Multiple Choice Mitt | December 20, 2007 1:49 PM

Actually the comment Huckabee made about Mormonism is TRUE, I know several LDS members and they actually do believe that satan and Jesus were brothers "spiritual brothers". So why should Huckabee be condemned for what he said. Sorry if you are shocked by the fact but LDS church does believe this..

Your bashing of Huckabee is fantastic because if you haven't noticed the more people like you bash him the more popular he gets. His evangelical base will rise up to defend him with full force..so thanks buddy!

Posted by Jenny | December 20, 2007 1:53 PM

Jenny,

To whom is your comment addressed?

Posted by Mark Adams | December 20, 2007 2:14 PM

Forrest Gump was smarter than Jenny all along.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 20, 2007 2:39 PM

sha writes: "He will win and big he will, and while the pundits try to demise him, or his other political rivals try to make him look bad. They may want to look at the mirror at themselves."

Finally the right-wing has produced its own George Orwell.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 20, 2007 2:41 PM

Re; update: Ross, don't worry, I wasn't under the mis-apprehension that you were trying to hedge on the validity of the blood libel. I thought it was just a stray journalistic tic, and decided to keep you on your toes.

Posted by Noah Millman | December 20, 2007 2:45 PM

The Jews don't actually use the blood of Christian children at Passover, full stop, no caveat appended

So far as you know. . . . I kid, I kid.

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Posted by Adam Greenwood | December 20, 2007 3:16 PM