THE OLD WORN CHANNEL OF POLITICS.

This Netanyahu thing reminds me in some ways of the visit Hungarian freedom fighter Louis Kossuth made to the States in 1851, as described by Francis Brown in his biography of New York Times founder Henry Raymond, Raymond of the Times. As Brown has it, Millard Fillmore and the conservative Whigs didn't want Kossuth to have too prominent a reception, on grounds that "public concern with what was held to be solely a European matter endangered American neutrality and held the threat of war," and abstained from welcoming him to Washington. But the proto-Republican Senator William Seward and Raymond "saw political significance in [Kossuth's] visit" and whooped him up when he came to New York, which effort did not go unresisted:

The city's bells peeled, and cannon boomed from Governor's Island, Bedloe's Island, the Navy Yard, and Brooklyn Heights. He came ashore at Castle Garden -- the Battery's trees were black with cheering boys... 

 At the Irving House more than 400 prominent New Yorkers and distinguished guests gather for the municipal dinner for Kossuth. In the banqueting hall, where evergreens masked the salon's columns and the Stars and Stripes was linked with the Hungarian Tricolor, the dinner moves slowly through its many courses and the wine was passed and repassed. The evening's guest of honor spoke for more than an hour. Toasts followed. That to the press belonged to Raymond, and as he prepared to respond, his figure dwarfed in the gay assemblage, [New York Courier and Enquirer editor] James Watson Webb challenged his right to speak. Cries of "Raymond!" "Webb!" echoed through the banquet hall, and when quiet was momentarily restored, Raymond tried to explain that he was only performing a duty assigned to him. Webb once more challenged his right. There were cheers, hisses, and boos, and as confusion mounted, the police were called...

So not everyone liked that idea, either. Also, Kossuth had a unfortunate taste for meddling in American affairs, just like Netanyahu. And, Brown reports from a contemporary account, "on this excitement the Times gained laurels and subscribers, and the Hungarians dollars and sympathy..." which analogizes nicely with the hopes of many rightwing Bibi's Boys who've been trying for years to get Jewish-Americans to love the GOP.

There are some major differences between the 1851 contretemps and this, though. For one, the White House eventually relented and received Kossuth, Congress invited him to be the first foreigner since Lafayette to address a joint session, and even Daniel Webster was inveigled to a Kossuth dinner where he "offered somewhat indiscreetly a toast to Hungarian independence that made Kossuth momentarily happy." ("The Hungarian question has settled down into the old worn channel of politics," Seward observed.) For another, Kossuth was according to Brown widely popular in America as "a symbol of European liberty"; Netanyahu, not so much. 

Also, there is no record of Seward or other Kossuth admirers like Abraham Lincoln crying aloud that Kossuth was their true leader, not this so-called President of the United States, as so many conservative nuts have been doing lately. (Quin Hillyer's ravings at National Review -- e.g., "Netanyahu — who spent far more of his formative years on the American mainland than Obama did, and who took enemy fire at the age when Obama was openly pushing Marxist theory..." -- are perhaps their ripest expression, though as we get closer to speech time maybe some of them will compose and perform a "Bibi for President" anthem.)

Finally, one may say that the Young America adherents who were hot for Kossuth and other European revolutionaries had at least the advantage of idealism on their side, not to mention fewer American historical examples to show them how badly these enthusiasms can turn out.

UPDATE. Well, that was bizarre. Say, how about we invite Iceland president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson to Congress to tell us how we should handle our rogue bankers? (I admit the analogy with Netanyahu isn't perfect, as Iceland is not trying to muscle anything out of us.)

AND THEY'LL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR WHINING.

I think most of my readers will agree that the murder by ISIS of Christians in Egypt is bad, right? Well, that's not enough for conservatives -- you have to agree with them that Christians here in the States are persecuted, too, or you suffer from "anti-Christian bias." Here's Rod Dreher's brain-teaser on the subject, from his evocatively-titled post "Lions & Christians in America":

The mass martyrdom last week of the 21 Egyptian Copts at the hands of ISIS is a sobering reminder of what real persecution looks like. Yet it is also the kind of thing that people in this country who fear and loathe Christians point to as an argument-ender when Christians complain about social injustice against themselves, e.g., “Get back to me when they’re chopping Christian heads off, then we’ll talk.” I would point out that ISIS is throwing gay men out of high windows to their deaths, and the crowds below are finishing off the job with stones. No secular liberal would — nor should — accept the argument that gays in the US have no right to complain against discrimination because they don’t have it as bad as gays in ISIS-held territory. So let’s put that cheap argument to bed.

Based on this, if some nut on the other side of the world is persecuting your affinity group, you're being persecuted here as well, or should at least be treated as if you were. I wonder if Dreher knows that ISIS is a champion killer of Muslims, and would agree that we should for that reason hold our domestic Muslims as a persecuted group as well, and tell their stateside critics like Pam Geller and Daniel Pipes to fuck off.

No chance of that -- you can read farther down Dreher's post about the media's "normalization of homosexuality," just a small number of paragraphs after Dreher was using gays as a point of comparison with Christians. At National Review, Jim Geraghty also thinks the newsies are unfair to American Christians; he heads toward the same affirmative-action argument we often get about conservatives in the press, but is smart enough to realize that most reporters are probably at least nominally Christian -- or else Jewish, and he can't complain about that; think what Bibi Netanyahu would say! -- so he takes an interesting tack:

Last night I argued that in most media newsrooms, the notion of Christians as victims doesn’t fit their usual narratives. Fournier argued that there are a lot of Christians in the Times newsroom, and that the Times has a lot of reporters in the Middle East, covering ISIS, at considerable risk to themselves. Both points are true but neither really refutes my argument. 

For starters, sure there are Christians in the Times newsroom, but not particularly representative ones. Here’s Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist, back in 2003: “Nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans. That’s the proportion who described themselves in a Gallup poll in December as evangelical or born-again Christians.”

So it's not enough for reporters to go to some modern Church where anything goes -- one has to roll hard and roll holy! Picture the new breed of newsroom quota-Christians: Fear-God Gump and Barebone McGillicuddy, working on a Style section piece about a hip new way to handle snakes.

My own solution would be regular cats-for-Christ slideshows, which should give everybody what they want, or at least deserve.

UPDATE. Mmm, them's some good comments, e.g., Megalon:

[Dreher says,] "The mass martyrdom last week of the 21 Egyptian Copts at the hands of ISIS is a sobering reminder of what real persecution looks like." 

Yes it is. That's why you and your cohorts in this country trying to claim that having to accept a paying job to bake a gay wedding cake means you're being persecuted the same way is so offensive. Especially when it's coming from a man who often talks like he's about ten minutes away from converting and joining IS himself.

Also, Hob runs down Kristof's shady "a group that includes 46 percent of Americans" = fundies claim and finds it possibly lacking. I wouldn't be surprised, but then, the claim is 15 years old -- maybe since then millions of Americans have got born-again, moved to the haunts 'n' hollers, and stopped voting, which explains how Obama won twice.

UPDATE 2. If we ever get Cats for Christ (no not this one) off the ground, I think we have to use ADHDJ's topline: "I'm not purrfect, just furgiven."