Ted Cruz and the “West Wing”

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

You know, this whole kerfuffle with Ted Cruz talking about “New York values” seemed familiar to me for some reason. I wasn’t sure why.

Did he mean generally liberal? Or was there something else involved?

It took me a while to remember, but I finally did. It was from the pilot of “The West Wing.” When Josh had wound up offending religious types on a morning talk show and the crew is having a meeting with them at the White House to try and smooth things over. And one of them, a woman named Mary Marsh, starts off an exchange that immediately puts Toby’s teeth on edge. This was the exchange:

MARY MARSH: You people…that New York sense of humor…it always…

CALDWELL: Mary, there’s absolutely no need…

MARY MARSH: Please, Reverend, they think it’s smart…smart talk…but nobody else does.

JOSH: I’m actually from Connecticut.

TOBY: Yes, but she meant Jewish.

A stunned silence. Everybody stares at Toby.

TOBY: When she said, “You people and your New York sense of humor,” she was talking about you and me, Josh.

So basically, if we follow the thought of Aaron Sorkin’s writing, can we safely assume that Ted Cruz just used conservative religious political code to make a nice big anti-Semitic swing?

PAD

21 comments on “Ted Cruz and the “West Wing””

  1. I think you’re spot-on, I agree it’s absolutely code for “Jew.” That way he dog-whistles not only to evangelical End-Timers but to all of those in his base who believe The Jews control the media and Wall Street and are all rich unlike their poor selves (never mind that most evangelical hucksters are rolling in it).

  2. I don’t know if Cruz’s comments are meant to be anti-Jewish as drawing a difference between the urban, secular values of NYC (guess he’s never been to upstate New York) and the rural, religious values of, well, Iowa. It’s fairly hypocritical considering that Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard (which are probably closer to “New York values” than Iowa) and his wife worked for Goldman Sachs (which is based in the New York he’s now eschewing). Let’s see how he does along the East Coast with comments like that!

    1. I’d second this. He’s attempting to appeal to the die hard Republicans and generalizing at the same time. No offense, but I’d say you (and Aaron Sorkin) are jumping to conclusions.

      I also wouldn’t pay him any mind, I don’t think he’ll get the nomination anyway.

      I find this round of running for the presidency interesting anyway. So essentially on either side, right now they’re all playing for the die hards–roughly 30% on either side of the voting population, saying whatever to appease them. If they play too hard for them now, sacrificing any sort of moderate view they might actually hold this puts off the voter (whom I would put at 40% of the population) who could go either way. Yet if they don’t go to the extreme then they don’t win the nomination.

      In short, the crazy train will keep in rolling

    2. On the West Wing, the characters being addressed actually were Jewish. If Senator Cruz had been attacking Senator Sanders, I’d be more inclined to read it that way here. However I do think “insufficiently Evangelical” (to people for whom Evangelical is the only acceptable type of Christian) in a more general sense is part of the package of what Senator Cruz was getting at with “New York values.”

  3. I think he just means liberalism is general. I don’t remember everything he said in that particular soundbite, but I do recall he went on to categorize pro-abortion and pro-Obamacare sentiments as being part of what he meant by “New York values.” Remember, a lot in the mid-west have been convinced by Fox News and their ilk that the East Coast views them ans a bunch of backward hicks in “flyover country” who ain’t good for nothing, and are bad for lots of things. I imagine he’s mostly playing to that mindset.

    1. If they’re putting down the values of a city that’s the quintessential American city in the eyes of the world and the center for world capitalism…maybe they ARE bad for lots of things.

      1. Well, leave us not blindly demonize large swaths of our fellow countrymen. That is, after all, just what Cruz and Trump et al are doing…

        I always feel that everyone, east coasters, mid westerners, southerners, etc, would do well to remember that not everyone in the US lives under the same conditions and circumstances as themselves. We all have a tendency to be provincial.

    2. Living my whole life in Indianapolis, that isn’t as far off as you would think. Indiana is probably the most racist state in the Mid-West. It’s been ran mostly by a bunch of greedy super-right wing religious nutballs and a good chunk of most of the Democrats are the so-called “Blue Dog” conservative Republican-lite wimps like Evan Bayh who only won because he was nicer than the Republicans he ran against.

  4. To be honest, there’s a certain type of New York humour that i have always referred to as “Jewish” – Neil Simon and Woody Allen come to mind.

    OTOH, i have more than once been mistaken – by Jewish acquaintances – for Jewish myself, and i really appreciate that kind of humour, so … i dunno.

    (I remember reading that “The Ðìçk Van Ðÿkë Show” only became “The Ðìçk Van Ðÿkë Show” after the network bosses told Carl Reiner he was … uhhh … “too ethnic” to headline the show.)

  5. Oh – have you heard Cruz’s “apology”?

    I apologize to the millions of New Yorkers who have been abandoned by liberal politicians. I apologize for the working men and women of New York who are denied jobs—jobs that have been plentiful just south of Pennsylvania—because Gov. Cuomo bans fracking. I apologize to all the pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-Second Amendment New Yorkers who Gov. Cuomo brazenly told have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.

    2. In other words: Sorry to the subset of newyorkers that are likely to vote for me in a republican primary and the rest of you can die for all I care.

  6. It’s standard Republican rhetoric. Trying to couch his campaign as part of a culture war.

    It’s been said that Republicans win only when democrats don’t show up at the polls. Part of me is aghast at the notion the Trump will get the nomination, and if so, through some terrible calamity, win the Presidency. The other part of me thinks that, if he should get the nomination, it will galvanize the opposition and get people to vote against him out of sheer terror at the prospect of a Trump America. So I dunno…he candidacy may be a good thing, if only to demonstrate what we don’t want. It should also show Republicans just how much their party is in freefall.

    1. I suspect you may be right wrto the effect of aTrump candidacy on the presidential election. What I would fear is that the voters galvanized to vote against DJT might ignore the races down the ballot – Senate, House, state legislators, school boards – while those who are galvanized to vote for DJT would not. We’ve seen through years of gridlock how important the House and Senate races are, and, especially in census years, the state legislatures.

  7. I have read on a couple of savvy websites (I think they’re savvy) that “New York values” used to be code for Jewish but is now code for Jewish and homosexual or for homosexual alone. Apart from the people who are sincerely trying to figure out which dogs the dog whistles are now aimed at, I think it is interesting — and appalling — that some people think that smearing gays is more broadly acceptable than smearing Jews, and so if they can switch the perception of their target, they will somehow gain ground with people other than their rabid base.

    1. The problem with thinking it’s a dog whistle is that would suggest that Cruz wasn’t targeting Cuomo and di Blasio, and I have trouble believing that.

      1. I thought the same thing when I heard that. I wanted Obama to walk in and correct him n what the first commandment was.

  9. “Believe me, if I could say Liberal Jew, I would.” – SNL’s version of Ted Cruz

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