Like many supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, I find myself disgusted with the blatant media bias against him, most especially by CNN and MSNBC. At first, they pretended he didn’t exist; then they mocked his candidacy as quixotic; and then they went out of their way to ignore his huge rallies (much larger than Donald Trump’s, which they often broadcast in their raving, rambling entirety) as they never showed even portions of his speeches while showing every speech Trump gave; and as he rose in the polls and started doing well in caucuses and primaries, they continued to refer to Secretary Clinton as the “presumptive nominee.” They predicted he would be finished by March 8th; the aptly named Dana Bash openly laughed at him when he replied to her question of when he would concede by stating that he would be in this race up through the California primary on June 7th (this ridicule took place right after he had just won Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Vermont); and both CNN and MSNBC ran advertisements during his victory speeches, pushing the silent video of him off to a little box in the upper left corner of the screen while selling their products.
Particularly annoying were three other things. First, when they cut away from him to their assorted talking heads and putative pundits, that august assemblage would routinely minimize the significance of his victory. Second, most of the time they focused on the Republican race, especially Trump’s every word and move, and spent more time addressing the tight race for second place in Michigan between Marco Rubio and John Kasich, although Senator Sanders had just pulled off what even pro-Clinton pollsters were terming the biggest upset in a state race in the history of primary elections. Third, both stations shifted from graphics that showed the number of elected delegates in smaller print plus the super delegates in larger print plus the total delegates in the largest print. Starting on March 8th, after Senator Sanders’ Michigan shocker, both CNN and MSNBC started showing only the total number of delegates, giving the impression that Secretary Clinton had an insurmountable lead. This is about as bad as “journalism” can get, a deliberate attempt to mislead viewers as to where the candidates now stand.
Which takes me to Anderson Cooper of CNN.
In the initial debate, the very first question that Mr. Cooper asked Senator Sanders was: “You — the — the Republican attack ad against you in a general election — it writes itself. You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said you’re not a capitalist. Doesn’t — doesn’t that ad write itself?” Setting aside for the moment that Bernie and Jane Sanders did not “honeymoon” in the Soviet Union (they visited Burlington’s sister city in the USSR under an exchange program set up by President Dwight D. Eisenhower), Sanders had 30 seconds to answer that bevy of loaded and misleading questions. He had no time to refute them.
But at the very end of the March 8th debate in Flint, Michigan, Anderson Cooper crossed the line of the most fundamental journalistic ethics when he followed up on an audience member’s question with the suggestion that Senator Sanders was somehow “running away” from being a Jew. Here is the full exchange (the audience member, Mr. Cooper, and Senator Sanders):
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Senator Sanders, do you believe that God is relevant, why or why not?
SANDERS: Well, I think — well, the answer is yes, and I think when we talk about God whether it is Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam, or Buddhism, what we are talking about is what all religions hold dear. And, that is to do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.
(APPLAUSE)
I am here tonight, and I’m running for president. I’m a United States Senator from my great state of Vermont because I believe morally and ethically we do not have a right to turn our backs on children in Flint, Michigan who are being poisoned, or veterans who are sleeping out on the street.
(APPLAUSE)
SANDERS: What I believe as the father of seven beautiful grandchildren, I want you to worry about my grandchildren, and I promise you I will worry about your family. We are in this together.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Senator Sanders, let me just follow up. Just this weekend there was an article I read in the Detroit News saying that you keep your Judaism in the background, and that’s disappointing some Jewish leaders. Is that intentional?
SANDERS: No. I am very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of what I am.
Look, my father’s family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical, and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping, and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler’s concentration camps. I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being.
(APPLAUSE)
Mr. Cooper’s follow up question violates the most basic rules of professional journalistic ethics (and note, in the photo above, how CNN highlights the question on the bottom of the screen). First, Mr. Cooper cites an unidentified article in a newspaper in which one person accused Senator Sanders of keeping his Judaism in the background. Then he asserts that this (claim, not fact) is disappointing to unspecified “Jewish leaders.” And then the “kill shot.” By asking, “Is that intentional?” he tacitly accepts as facts that Senator Sanders is doing these very things that the one unidentified person who wrote an article has accused him of doing. Mr. Cooper’s “logic” would make Aristotle spin in his grave. But Mr. Cooper’s purpose was twofold. First, he concludes the debate by reminding everyone that Senator Sanders is a Jew, thus opening the path for an antisemitic response from viewers. Second, he suggests that Senator Sanders’ fellow Jews are unhappy with him, which conjures up a different kind of problem. In a word—antisemites don’t like him because he’s a Jew, and Jews don’t like him because he’s not Jewish enough. Mr. Cooper’s clever attempt to end the debate on this “Jew baiting” note failed only because of Senator Sanders’ eloquence and sincerity. Although he does not wear his religion on his sleeve, he reached into his heart and answered the question in such a way that should have shamed Mr. Cooper, were he capable of shame. It should also be noted that Secretary Clinton looked very uncomfortable during this exchange, and smiled and nodded approvingly at Senator Sanders’ reply. That’s called “class.”
But while Senator Sanders was eloquent in his reply to a nasty, mean-spirited question, and Secretary Clinton was clearly equally unhappy with Mr. Cooper’s stepping way over the line, here’s what I was thinking as I mulled over this exchange in the aftermath of the debate.
Who doesn't know that Bernie Sanders is Jewish? Is Mr. Cooper aware that the Founding Fathers went to enormous lengths to separate church and state when they created this nation? Just because ideologues like Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee would like to turn America into a Christian theocracy, or at least a theodicy, that does not mean that every candidate must parade her or his religion around to get votes. Neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Sanders do that. And exactly what was Senator Sanders supposed to do to please Mr. Cooper and the anonymous article writer--wear a Star of David on his sleeve the way his relatives were forced to before they were slaughtered? Many of us Jews are fairly secular. We see all religions as beautiful, as ways to reach out to God. We're proud of our ethnicity, values, and history--even if we don't go to synagogue every week. Our relationship with God is deeply personal and we don't use it to score political points because, frankly, that's a sacrilege. Senator Sanders’ ethics couldn't be more Jewish. And if Anderson Cooper thinks it significant that some anonymous writer of an irrelevant op ed newspaper piece is bothered that Bernie's wonderful wife Jane is Irish Catholic, that he doesn't speak Hebrew, or that he doesn't do photo ops praying in shul to garner the Jewish vote, who cares?
By way of analogy, both Anderson Cooper and and fellow CNN anchor Don Lemon are gay. Mr. Cooper came out in July 2012, and Mr. Lemon a year earlier. Do they announce this every time they come on the air? Is Mr. Cooper hiding his sexual orientation by not constantly bringing it up? Is being gay the entirety of his identity? Of course not. The very questions are ludicrous. And no one should ever imply that Mr. Cooper is running away from his sexual orientation the way Mr. Cooper went after Senator Sanders on his religion. Some things are just wrong.
Incidentally, in 1972 (Mr. Cooper was then five-years-old) and 1976, when Bernie Sanders first ran for office in Vermont, he was a very vocal ally of the LGBTQ community. In his platform those years, he proposed the abolition of all discriminatory laws pertaining to sexuality. In 1983, after being elected Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he backed and joined the city’s first gay pride march. Throughout his life in politics, he has consistently voted against all measures aimed at lessening the LGBTQ community’s rights, and consistently supported bills against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. As a Congressman in 1996, he opposed the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which passed in the House 342-67 and the Senate 85-14, and was signed into law by former President Bill Clinton. In 1999, he voted against an amendment that would have prevented same-sex couples in Washington D.C. from adopting children. He supported civil unions as far back as 2000, and he came out strongly for marriage equality in 2009. In 2011, he called upon President Obama to “join in supporting marriage equality.” In 2013, he co-sponsored the Uniting Families Act, which would have allowed partners of any legal U.S. citizen or resident to obtain lawful permanent residency. This bill was primarily intended to allow LGBTQ residents and citizens of the United States to bring their partners into America, just as members of opposite sex couples are able to do. He has also co-sponsored and voted for legislation that supports the LGBTQ community’s equal rights in schools, the workplace, and the military, as well as gay adoption. For his efforts, the Human Rights Campaign recognized his record with a 100% rating.
Now that Mr. Cooper is (hopefully) done with his Jew-baiting, he might consider taking Senator Bernie Sanders aside privately and saying a simple “thank you.”