By: E&P Staff The column that led to James Goldsborough departure after 12 years as a liberal voice opposite the San Diego (Calif.) Union-Tribune's Republican-leaning editorial page recounts a quiet dinner last summer spent discussing the volatile topics of the Middle East and the U.S. presidential election.
Over "a good bottle of Santa Ynez cabernet," Goldsborough wrote, he and a friend of 30 years, Benjamin J. Cohen, discussed how Jews would vote in the upcoming U.S. election.
The column was posted today on the Web site of KPBS, San Diego's public radio station. The full text is available
here.
Goldsborough wrote that he predicted Jewish voters, who backed Democrat Al Gore by a 4-1 margin in 2000, would switch to the Republican George W. Bush this time around. Bush, he wrote, "kowtows to [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon," and was "pandering to American Jews by blocking progress on an Israeli-Palestinian accord."
But Cohen disagreed, Goldsborough wrote. The son of a Zionist family who belonged to Young Judea as a boy, Cohen argued that night that "it's impossible Jews could ever vote for Bush." The reason, he said, was a Jewish tradition of seeking social justice. "How can people who believe in social justice for all people vote for a man whose politics favor the wealthy over everyone else?" Cohen asked, according to Goldsborough's account.
The column had been scheduled to run in the Union-Tribune on Monday, Nov. 29. The night before, however, Publisher Copley read the column and decided it should not run. "
"He was concerned about the potential for some members of the community taking inordinate offense, and wasn't persuaded that the strength of the column's analysis outweighed that risk," Harold W. "Hal" Fuson Jr., president and general counsel of the Union-Tribune's parent company, The Copley Press Inc., told E&P last week.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here