Obama: Not an Anti-Semite

Richard Cohen, the most useless columnist in America this side of Maureen Dowd, had a hit piece out on Barack Obama today, which noted that Obama's church's pastor's daughter's magazine gave an award to Louis Farrakhan, and managed to splutter out this pants-soilingly embarrassing bit of incoherence: "I don't for a moment think that Obama shares Wright's views on Farrakhan. But the rap on Obama is that he is a fog of a man." Try plugging that conjunction into a truth-table.

Obama has responded:

I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.

So, that should clear up Richard Cohen's fog, shouldn't it? Meanwhile, it's possible to play six degrees of Louis Farrakhan with anybody who's been active in black politics, however peripherally. So the Cohen logic would disqualify any black politician from the presidency.

UPDATE: Excellent point from Henry Farrell. Billy Graham and Richard Nixon used to tickle each other into euphoria exchanging their shared hatred of Jews. Billy Graham is also what some credulous people call a "spiritual adviser" to Hillary Clinton. The rap on Hillary Clinton is that she's a fog of a woman: out there for all these years, but we still don't really know her. So until HRC explicitly denounces anti-Semitism generally and Graham specifically, we can't know for sure where she stands.