What Is it With Neo-Cons and Screaming at Rabbis?

Adam L. Silverman, PhD *

Rick Perlstein, one of the top historians of modern American Conservatism, has a new profile of Sheldon Adelson up at Rolling Stone's Politics section.  If you want a much better understanding of what drives Adelson, what he wants, and what he expects to get from a Republican presidential victory later this year, click on over and give it a read - its not long, but is informative and entertaining.

And like (we've previously mentioned about) Dr. Krauthammer, Mr. Adelson seems to like screaming at rabbis he disagrees with: "Then there was the time, late in 1999, when Las Vegas's Temple Beth Shalom honored the city's new Jewish mayor with a dinner. It was originally to be held at Adelson's new Venetian, but the Democratic mayor refused to cross the picket line. So they held it at the Four Seasons instead. Adelson withdrew the $250,000 he had pledged for the temple's building fund and tossed it to another Jewish organization instead – but not before verbally dressing down Beth Shalom's rabbi with such virulence that the shaken rabbi recalled, "Nobody had ever talked to me like he talked to me."

I think somebody needs a nap...

* Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College (USAWC).  The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of USAWC and/or the US Army.

Comments

[The beaver]

Dr Silverman

There is only one place where he can't be the bully: Macau.....( yes he buys his way with the authorities but he can't bully them, otherwise guess who will be knocking on his door.

[Pirate Laddie]

Well, the rabbi at Beth Shalom ain't the first of his vocation to be ill treated by the pharisees or scribes of his day. I recall an itinerate rabbi a few years back who had a pretty nasty run-in with the money bags of his day.

[Alba Etie]

What is very problematic from a representative democracy perspective is that the Mr Adelsens of our polity are buying politicians for their own personal agendas. I keep coming back to 2000 when Sen McCain was running for our GOP nomination -and was openly supporting campaign finance reform .
IMO the recent Citizen United ruling by the SCOTUS is a bigger threat to our shared democratic values currently then AQ .