Name That Party: NYT Quick to ID GOP Insult of Jews -- Avoided Labeling Dem's Anti-Semitic Tactics

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Two Republican chairmen in South Carolina have apologized for an op-ed article that made a clumsy comment about wealthy Jews being fiscally prudent. Reporter Robbie Brown and The New York Times's headline writers quickly let us know the two offenders were Republican: "2 South Carolina Republicans Apologize for Reference to Jews."

It made quite a contrast from how the Times treated a Democratic candidate for Congress who circulated truly scurrilous claims against her Jewish opponent in a 2008 primary election.

In Wednesday's story, both the online headline (the print edition headline is different) and a photo caption readily identified the offenders as members of the GOP, as did Brown in his first sentence:

Two Republican county chairmen in South Carolina have apologized for a newspaper op-ed article that stereotyped Jews as financial penny pinchers.

The chairmen wrote the article in The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, S.C., on Sunday in defense of Senator Jim DeMint's opposition to Congressional earmarks, comparing his fiscal watchfulness to that of Jews.

"There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves," the opinion article stated. "By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation's pennies and trying to preserve our country's wealth and our economy's viability to give all an opportunity to succeed."

A Democratic state senator, Joel Lourie of Kershaw and Richland Counties, who is Jewish, called the comment "disgusting" and "unconscionable" and said it represented "prejudice in its purest form." He called for the two chairmen to lose their positions in the state Republican Party and asked Mr. DeMint and Karen Floyd, the state party chairwoman, to denounce their comments.

In contrast, the Times's Adam Nossiter in August 2008  managed to write a disturbing story about a far more inflammatory example of genuine racism and anti-Semitism in a Democratic primary in Memphis -- but left out the "Democrat" part, which is pretty hard to do when reporting on a party primary election.

And as opposed to the klutzy stereotyped tribute offered by the South Carolina Republican county chairmen, the earlier offense was committed by an actual Democratic politician:

In the culmination of a racially fraught Congressional campaign in Memphis, a black candidate is linking her liberal-leaning white primary opponent in Thursday's contest, Representative Steve Cohen, to the Ku Klux Klan in a television advertisement.

Mr. Cohen's campaign said it was an unusually direct effort to inject race into the contest.

The advertisement for the challenger, Nikki Tinker, juxtaposes Mr. Cohen's picture with that of a hooded Klansman, and criticizes Mr. Cohen for voting against renaming a park in Memphis currently named for the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Ku Klux Klan founder.

One flier circulated in Memphis read: "Why do Steve Cohen and the Jews Hate Jesus?"