Bob Herbert Knows Who the New Massa Is

Bob Herbert is a black liberal columnist for the New York Times.  There's nothing remarkable about his writing or much original about his ideas:  America is racist white country, Republicans are bad people, and so on.  (He could be on to something about the Republicans, though.)  His haughtiness during television appearances is off-putting.

In what might seem to be an unusual twist, this Saturday he took on Nikki Tinker, a black woman who recently unsuccessfully challenged Steve Cohen, a Democrat who represents a majority black district in Tennessee.

Tinker's sins:  an ad linking Cohen to the Ku Klux Klan, and another suggesting that he's a hypocrite to visit "our" (i.e., black) churches. 

Herbert actually waded in to defend Cohen's vote against renaming a park in Memphis currently named for the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Ku Klux Klan founder. Why the sudden burst of Klan-defense from Manhattan? 

Well, as the surname "Cohen" suggests, Cohen is Jewish.  Herbert delights in quoting him:  "It's not like Nathan Bedford Forrest was inviting Jews over to celebrate Seder." 

For Herbert, this was an easy racial power equation to solve:  Black and white may squabble down below, but the most sacred of the cows is the Jews.  They are, as I have documented, Herbert's bosses, both at the Times and as a political and cultural matter generally.  So, explaining the spectacle of a black man denouncing a black woman and defending a "white" politician is really fairly easy.   

I have not plumbed all Herbert's columns, but it's a safe bet none defend a white gentile politician in even remotely the same way. 

Down below Herbert's office in Times Square, there's the occasional band of odd black nationalists who hector passers-by, both white and Jewish (rough video —  in it, a man sparring with the black nationalists screams "I'm Jewish!  I'm on your side!", to which the lead speaker responds by belittling the Holocaust, causing the Jewish man to cry.) 

I certainly don't endorse this bizarre band, but as the comments about Jews show, its speakers have not learned the lesson of ascending to power:  You may — and should — denounce white gentiles, but must always defend Jews.  Even if they voted in support of a Klansman.  For having learned this lesson, Bob Herbert keeps his elevated station, far above the craziness of the street.

Christopher Donovan is the pen name of an attorney and former journalist.