"Jesus was a community organizer; Pilate was a governor"

This was posted on Pajamas Media today by historian Timothy Furnish and it takes on the ahistorical notion that "Jesus was a community organizer; Pilate was a governor."Furnish wrote:

"My friend Rick Shenkman, who runs History News Network, recently published his new book Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth about the American Voter. Considering the legions of Democrats convinced that “Jesus was a community organizer; Pilate was a governor” qualifies as sound political discourse, I’d have to answer “pretty damn stupid.”"

"According to Rush Limbaugh (citing Lexis-Nexis), the phrase was devised on September 4, 2008, by a Washington Post blogger. As of this writing, 10 days later, Google lists 13,300 hits for the phrase. Most seem to be from the left-wing echo chambers of the Internet, where Daily Kosites, Huffingtonistas, and Obamists have separated virtual shoulders, giving each other electronic high-fives for their wit. But not all are e-cranks: no less a journalistic paragon than Tom Brokaw hit Rudy Giuliani with the phrase on the September 14 Meet the Press. And even some high-ranking Democrats have jumped on the bandwagon, most notably former Gore campaign chair and current DNC member Donna Brazile and Tennessee Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen. Brazile repeated the line on CNN last week, while Representative Cohen dredged it up on the House floor."

"The phrase was intended to counteract the anti-Obama jab by GOP vice-presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin that even a small-town mayor — her job before becoming Alaska’s chief executive — has more responsibility than a community organizer, Obama’s self-described seminal experience. Palin was in turn responding to Democrat belittling of her as the “former mayor of a town of 9,000 people.” (Of course, they can’t exactly call her “the governor of a state as large in land area as all the blue states of 2004 combined.”)"

"This Democrat trope is qualitatively different than the preceding merely political barbs, however. By invoking the founder of the world’s largest religion — considered not merely human but divine by orthodox Christians for two millennia — as well as the Roman official who sentenced him to death, the Democrats are not just raising the insult bar but moving the rhetoric onto a field of battle that is supposed to be off limits."

Full post.