My friend, Mitch Berg, over at Shot in the Dark, is having a field day going after the Democratic Primary winner of district 60B. The woman who won, Ilhan Omar, defeated a long-serving representative Phyllis Kahn. Kahn was a weird, unhelpful, and vengeful representative who did little to bring meaningful issues to the floor and less to help her district. I worked on a campaign to replace her 20 years ago which failed when the local "machinery" decided to stay with Kahn, even though they knew she was deeply flawed. It took 20 years to finally move her out and the state and district 60B are the better for it.
But like all humans, her vanquisher Ms. Omar, has flaws too. Her "big" flaw was that in the process of marrying two men (she remarried her first husband) she and they did not seek or obtain marriage documents nor divorce documents here in the U.S. Should she have? The answer is "yes" if she or either men claimed that marital status to the government (as part of tax papers). Not doing so might be a violation of law. Not being a lawyer, I can't say whether marriage under a social/religious custom which is not submitted to the state is something you can claim or if you claim whether it's legal or illegal.
Omar's conduct is not outside the customs of her society, nor even American culture in the whole. People get married by a church but some who are "anti-government" chose not to memorialize that marriage with the authorities. Should she have? Well, to me, yes, but I'm not Somali. I'm not someone who came from an area which justified a deep and abiding mistrust of the role and utility of government.
She did get a license for her second marriage AND she failed to get a properly documented divorce. Good for getting the license (to me), bad for not formalizing the divorce (again, to me). Is it unusual for folks to not formalize a divorce, yes, very much so just as it is not uncommon among some cultures for folks to not memorialize their marriage with the authorities. So, am I surprised, or even at all bothered that she didn't document her first marriage or document her divorce, not even a little bit. There's no evidence whatsoever she's broken any law that really matters (and yes, I'm putting a value judgment on her conduct, but look if she's broken a law against speeding, do we really care very much?) Long and short, she lived within her culture. Would I have rather that she documented her marriages and the end of each, sure. Do I think she behaved immorally, not in the slightest. She married a man, had kids, left him and married another as her culture directs is part of the value of a woman, found he wasn't the right person, and went back to the first. Ok, we might want her to stay with the first, but we also don't want someone to divorce 3 or 5 people, to be an adulterer while married, to demean the opposite sex, to treat them as if they are objects rather than people. Yet, this latter conduct is the conduct of the Republican Presidential nominee. PowerLine Blog, from whom Berg regurgitated the story, took the time to attack this woman and went even further, saying she'd married her brother (a flat-out bigoted lie). I wonder when they'll get to Trump's infidelities, something which most WOUD consider immoral.
Now, my friend Mitch didn't repeat that latter part and left out the fact that his heroes over at PowerLine had told such an offensive lie. No, instead what he did was engage in race-baiting, saying that if someone comes to the US they should learn our laws and abide by them, as if not filing for a marriage license is a foreign "thing" only. He said this even though he said he probably would do the same thing, damning himself in the process of objecting to her conduct. He said it was something that someone might write-off as a "Muslim thing" and that as such was something non-Muslim's wouldn't understand, but of course, Ms. Omar didn't do anything of the sort.
In so doing, it talking about it as both foreign and suggesting that the Muslim community might wave off objections, he demeans Ms. Omar. SHE didn't say that non-Muslim's wouldn't understand, she didn't belittle or demean others, but Berg by his "non-accusation" plays to that fear/reaction among whites of being told they "just can't understand." She didn't say it but he most certainly played to it even though it was irrelevant.
Worse, though, was the anti-Somali/anti-Muslim tone of his screed. He basically said something akin to, "If you're going to come to the country, you damned well should learn to speak the language." Laws are more important than language to be sure in terms of the need to adhere, but there are laws with serious ramifications if not followed and there are laws which say you can't have oral sex, in short, there are laws which mean something and there are those which due to culture/upbringing many folks simply ignore. That's not news, not to Berg who admitted he probably wouldn't adhere, and because it's not news, saying it's about being "foreign" is just taking a change to stoke anti-immigrant fears and is, yes, race-baiting (though let me be even more clear, the concept of race is an artificial construct, the better term is ethnicity-baiting). He's demeaning her, and with her other Somalis for whom she's an emblem, because of her ethnicity. He's claiming it's her "foreign-ness" which is the problem. I agree that her ethnicity may very well have driven her decision, but I also see that it could have been someone with a European ethnicity and strongly question whether the issue would have been an issue at all if she were Swedish or German. I am convinced it wouldn't have been raised as an ethnic or "foreign-ness" issue if she had been. Berg engaged is the most basic form of hate-stoking. It's her "African Culture" which is the problem, like her "Sharia Law" or her "Islamic Hatred". Her culture may and is different, but this country has welcomed (more or less) many cultures, including their differences, over the years. Calling those differences out as showing conceit or contempt for OUR culture IS the problem. It's yellow-journalism and nothing less or more.
One last point, Berg claims that liberals love regulation and the "mommy state" and thinks we're hypocrites for not going after Ms. Omar. In this Berg again shows his deep and abiding ignorance of what liberalism is and who liberals are. We are committed civil libertarians. If Ms. Omar didn't engage in some sort of fraud about her marital status, I embrace (and liberals embrace) her cultural choices, not condemn them. I embrace her right to privacy, not condemn it. I embrace the idea that the government only has a right to information for which it has a good and proper purpose (e.g. the 14th Amendment's key point). I don't reject that right to privacy as so many conservatives do (including one Mitch Berg). I certainly don't feel more needless laws are a good thing, such as needless voter ID laws or "women's health laws" or Patriot Act laws or secrecy laws (which have exploded in number and use since 2001). I do believe in a common interest where those with the most should not be allowed to abuse those without power (like PowerLine going after the Somali community via yellow-journalism). I don't think we need a law to end that practice but we do need the courage to accept cultural variety and the integrity to not use variety to stoke hate when that very same variety would be entirely acceptable if the person's name was Anderson instead of Omar.
