By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Imagine it’s 2007 and a prominent journalist is
interviewing then-Senator Barack Obama. “Senator, people are really interested
in you and your identity. I just wanted to ask you as a historical matter, when
you filled out your application to Columbia, to Harvard Law School, did you
list yourself as an African American?”
Imagine he pressed further. Do you have a favorite
traditional black food? Who’s your favorite African-American performer?
It’s a safe bet that journalist would be lucky to have a
job today as a greeter at Wal-Mart.
Mark Halperin isn’t in danger of losing his job — nor
should he be — even though he did pretty much question Texas senator Ted Cruz
that way last week.
The Bloomberg Politics host grilled Cruz about his Cuban
bona fides, sounding like a thuggish TSA cop questioning an immigrant’s
passport.
The lowlight came when Halperin said, “I want to give you
the opportunity to directly welcome your colleague Senator Sanders to the race,
and I’d like you to do it, if you would, en español.”
Halperin’s tone-deaf performance has earned a lot of
scorn. It’s widely known Cruz isn’t fluent in Spanish (unlike Marco Rubio and
Jeb Bush). The Twitter hashtag #HalperinQuestions is brutal. “Sen Cruz, please
say Luuuuuuucy!!! for me? We need to be sure.” “Mr. Kennedy, if you are indeed
the first Irish Catholic president, chug this bottle of Jamesons and eat a
potato.” “Governor Martinez, I’m looking for a good taco truck near the
Bloomberg office in New York. Where should I go?”
No wonder Halperin apologized Monday.
Though the style of the interview was a disaster,
Halperin had a point. Cruz has invoked his Latino heritage for years, and
justifiably so. His official bio touts the fact that he was the first Latino
solicitor general of Texas and the first Latino clerk for the chief justice of
the Supreme Court. Also, Cruz is a critic of affirmative action, so questions
about hypocrisy on that issue are legitimate as well. Besides, Cruz is more
than smart and nimble enough to handle it. (He accepted Halperin’s apology
graciously.)
Still, there are two problems with Halperin’s technique.
First, he was palpably and offensively condescending, essentially accusing Cruz
of being a fraud. Instead of putting Cruz on the spot, he could have simply
asked, “Do you speak Spanish?” Why try to embarrass Cruz, particularly when
there’s no reason for him to be embarrassed? (It’s not like we expect, say,
Indian-American politicians to speak Hindi.)
The answer to that question raises the second problem:
the identity-politics double standard for Republicans. Columnist Ruben
Navarrette notes that U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro
and his brother, Representative Joaquin Castro (D., Texas), aren’t fluent in
Spanish either. But, Navarrette writes, “you could bet Halperin would never put
those questions to the Castros because, as Democrats, they’re assumed to be
closer to the masses than Cruz is.”
The assumption that Democrats are “prolier-than-thou” is
only part of the problem. There’s a widespread assumption that racial, ethnic,
and sexual authenticity is bound up in support for liberal policies. Supreme
Court Justice Clarence Thomas has one of the most poignant life stories of any
African American in public life, but he’s routinely belittled as a sellout
because he’s conservative. Ben Carson, a child of an illiterate single mom in
inner-city Detroit who became a world-renowned brain surgeon, has also gotten
the “Uncle Tom” treatment.
Feminists love to play this game, treating conservative
women as if they aren’t real women. Naomi Wolf sniped that former U.N.
Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote like “a woman without a uterus.” Gloria
Steinem called Kirkpatrick a “female impersonator.” After John McCain picked
Sarah Palin as his running mate, University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger
wrote that Palin’s “greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”
Although Halperin’s snideness was gratuitous, I’d still
rather live in a world where the media treated all politicians with similar
skepticism. Instead, female and minority Democrats are uncritically celebrated
while Republicans are treated like traitors to their race or gender simply
because they don’t think the way they’re “supposed” to. That, not anti-Latino
animus, is Halperin’s real bias.
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