Obama Derangement Syndrome

Obama Derangement Syndrome: Hanukkah Edition

December 09, 2011 11:31 am ET by Chelsea Rudman

Right-wing media have spent years claiming President Obama incorrectly celebrates or snubs Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas, so it's no surprise that this year, they're attacking how he celebrates Jewish holidays, too.

Obama, along with the first lady and Vice President Biden, threw an early White House Hanukkah celebration on Thursday. Obama acknowledged in his remarks that the celebration was "a little bit early" -- the first night of Hanukkah this year is December 20. The president is scheduled to begin his vacation in Hawaii on December 17 -- though it's likely to be delayed due to the ongoing stalemate over the payroll tax cuts -- so any White House observance of the holiday would have to take place before then.
Of course, right-wing media attacked the early Hanukkah party, sometimes implying that Obama was slighting the Jewish community through the early observance. Fox Nation kicked off the freakout yesterday by linking to an Associated Press article on the party with the headline:


Of course, the actual AP story didn't have that headline.
The Drudge Report today also linked to the AP story with a number of similar headlines:

And blogger Jim Hoft featured a post about the Hanukkah celebration on his blog Gateway Pundit, writing, "It's OK. It's just a Jewish Holiday. Obama celebrates Hanukkah two weeks early and lights all the candles."

This follows the right-wing media's long crusade to desperately portray Obama as antagonistic to Jews. Blogger Pamela Geller has claimed that Obama was "wet-nursed on Jew hatred," while Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds suggested he "hates Jews." This year, conservative bloggers attacked Obama's Passover statement, calling him "vicious" and "tone deaf" and saying he "punch[ed] the Jewish people in the face" for comparing Passover's story of freedom to the revolutions that were then sweeping the Middle East; few of them noticed, though, that Sarah Palin made the exact same comparison in a Passover statement of her own.

And right-wing media figures have also claimed Obama is anti-Israel, saying his policies will lead to the "destruction of Israel" and claiming he's "sided with terrorists" and "people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to exist." Yet recent polls show that a majority of Israeli Jews support Obama.