WHY DO REPUBLICANS HATE AMERICANS WHO PRACTICE THE MUSLIM FAITH?

Most tribes and ethnic groups and religions and nations, even companies-- all these kinds of identity conglomerations-- build up a collective consciousness that elevates members at the expense of non-members. Taken to the extreme you get Hitler's gas chambers or institutions like race-based slavery, pogroms, all sorts of examples of man's ultimate inhumanity to man.

So I was driving from Ceuta to Fes in late Spring, 1969 with my gal Martha. We picked up some hitch-hikers and they were a couple of cool friendly heads and we all smoked up some kif and they started telling Arab jokes. They were pretty funny stereotyping things and we all laughed. But the jokes started wearing thin pretty quickly. Like Martha and I, these two were Jews from NYC. I interjected a couple of Jewish jokes. They were stunned-- shocked... they had never heard a Jewish joke. It was beyond their comprehension that someone would tell a joke stereotyping Jews. They asked to be let out of the van. They didn't want to ride with bigots. I couldn't blame them. I have quite a few friends just like them.

Now, you've probably never heard of Belal Dalati. I hadn't either. But tonight I'm introducing Green Day at a People For the American Way dinner in their honor. Ambassador Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are making the keynote address and I get to present Green Day with the Spirit of Liberty Award. I'm really excited. I went to the barber-- first time I had a lady barber-- and got my head shaved for the occasion. While she was shaving, I was reading the L.A. Times and right there on the front page, was a vile little story I wanted to dismiss as "Look at those bigoted Republican hate-mongers." Not that that isn't true and not that that wouldn't be a perfectly acceptable interpretation of what's behind the story. But... well, judge for yourself.


Dalati, a Syrian-born naturalized American citizen, a reputable businessman and a moderate Republican (don't ask me) is running for the Anaheim City Council. Anaheim is in Orange County; it's like Dallas there. Dalati's religion is Islam. A well-know Muslim hater, former Republican state party chairman Shawn Steel, alerted the powerful hated-and-bigotry wing of the local GOP that Dalati could be "a Manchurian candidate." (Steel ought to meet McCain if he wants a real Manchurian candidate.) What a member of the Anaheim City Council is going to deliver to the Manchurians I never quite got from Steel's statements, which are really just about pure, vicious hated and racism.

The clearly unhinged Steel, who was still the chairman of the GOP in 2003, not 1950, claims that Dalati "looks good on the outside, but the guy could be an extremist, Is his primary concern to fix the potholes and improve the city, or does he really have an agenda here to support extremist organizations and cloak them with respectability?"

This is the second instance of Republican Muslim candidate-bashing I've come across in the current election cycle. The big one, covered extensively by DWT, courtesy of our man on the ground in Minneapolis, Isaac Peterson, involves Keith Ellison (D) and a bigot named Alan Fine (R), both running for the seat being vacated by Martin Sabo.

What ties these two together is blind prejudice based on irrational fear of the unknown, fear of that which is different. The kind of person attracted to the contemporary Republican Party finds it permissible-- even encouraged-- to celebrate the fears and prejudices that lead to the way campaigns are being conducted against Dalati, the Republican in Anaheim and Ellison, the Democrat in Minneapolis. It'll be interesting to watch and see the effectiveness of conscious efforts to stir up racial and religious hatred in each constituency.