Jennifer Rubin | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Blogger Journalist |
Known for | Columnist and Blogger for the Washington Post |
Religion | Judaism[1] |
Jennifer Rubin is an American columnist and a blogger for the Washington Post. Previously she worked at Commentary Magazine, the Pajamas Media, Human Events, and the Weekly Standard. She also published at Politico, New York Post, New York Daily News, National Review, the Jerusalem Post, and a variety of other media publications.
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Early career
Rubin was born in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia, and moved with her family as a child to California in 1968.[2] She attended college and law school at the University of California, Berkeley. Before moving into journalism, Rubin was a labor and employment lawyer in Los Angeles, working for Hollywood studios, for 20 years. In 2005, she moved to Northern Virginia with her husband (who is an accountant) and two children. She offered a story to the Weekly Standard about Mitt Romney, and continued doing freelance work for two years before joining Commentary Magazine.[3]
Rubin's move to the Washington Post in November 2010 became a national news story and was discussed by the media on all sides of the political spectrum, ranging from The American Conservative and the Weekly Standard, to Salon Magazine and the Slate magazine.
Political views
Slate blogger David Weigel called Rubin "one of the right’s most prolific online political writers".[4] The Commentary editor John Podhoretz, who is the half-brother of Rubin, writes that Rubin "labored daily from her home in suburban Virginia [...] never missing a news story, never missing an op-ed column, reading everything and digesting everything and commenting on everything. She is a phenomenon, especially considering that for the first two decades of her working life, she was not a writer or a journalist but a lawyer specializing in labor issues [..]".[5] In welcoming remarks, The Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt writes that "her provocative writing has become 'must read' material for news and policy makers and avid political watchers."[6]
Rubin's political views are widely characterized as conservative[7] and neoconservative.[8] She was also called a supporter of Tea Party movement.[9] She has opposed Barack Obama on multiple occasions, calling him “the most anti-Israel U.S. president (ever),”[10] and writing that “Obama isn’t moderate, doesn’t like the free market, and isn’t interested in waging a robust war on Islamic fundamentalists.”[11] Rubin consistently supports the Likud government and other conservative factions in Israel, and has been a harsh critic of Hamas and of the PLO leadership.[12][13][14][15][16]
In January 2010, Rubin authored an article for Commentary Magazine asking "Why Jews Hate Sarah Palin".[17] The article garnered criticism that it was anti-Semitic, allegedly trafficking in anti-Jewish stereotypes such as that Jews are elitist and contemptuous of the working class. [18]
After joining the Washington Post, Rubin drew criticism in the wake of the 2011 Norway attacks after she published a blog post suggesting incorrectly that the attacks were carried out by Islamic jihadists.[19] In a follow-up column[20], Rubin acknowledged that her decision to blame Muslim extremists for the Norway attacks was premature, but she did not apologize for her remarks nor did she condemn the right-wing anti-Muslim ideology that motivated the attacker, Anders Behring Breivik. Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer who holds similar views as Rubin regarding Israel and Islam, defended Rubin's initial article that falsely accused Muslims of perpetrating the attack.[21]
Rubin used her blog to accuse the Occupy Wall Street movement of antisemitism[22]. In her blog posts Rubin promoted a video by the Emergency Committee for Israel that purported to show antisemitism at the Occupy Wall Street protest. Critics of Rubin have blasted her portrayal of the protest movement as inaccurate, noting that the large number of Jews affiliated with the movement, the confrontations between OWS protestors and antisemites, and the financial ties between the Emergency Committee for Israel and Wall Street firms[23]. Others have noted that Rubin's primary example of what she calls "antisemitism" is actually a mentally unstable homeless man unaffiliated with the OWS movement who has been wandering the lower Manhattan financial district for years[24].
In Oct 2011, Rubin again drew condemnation for tweeting a blog post by Rachel Decter Abrams (wife of neoconservative policy analyst Elliot Abrams) which some have interpreted as a call for genocide against the Palestinian people. Liberal Jewish advocacy group J Street described the blog post as an "unhinged rant filled with incitement and hate speech". [25] Beirut english newspaper Al-Akhbar ran a story by Max Blumenthal headlined "Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin promotes call for Palestinian genocide"[26] whereas Media Matters Senior Foreign Policy Fellow MJ Rosenberg argued that Rubin's support for such a position should disqualify her from writing for the Washington Post.[27]
Notes
- ^ "Jennifer Rubin and Shabbat". http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2011/08/04/3088860/jennifer-rubin-and-shabbat.
- ^ California, There It Went, Commentary Magazine (October 2010)
- ^ Jaffe, Harry. Jennifer Rubin Is Whacking the Lefties, Washingtonian (April 2011)
- ^ David Weigel, Punditin’ Ain’t Easy, Washington Independent, January 13, 2009.
- ^ John Podhoretz, To Jennifer Rubin, The Fondest of Farewells, Commentary Magazine, November 23, 2010.
- ^ WaPo Tilts Right, Hires Conservative Blogger, November 24, 2010.
- ^ Washington Post hires conservative blogger, Yahoo News, November 23, 2010.
- ^ Washington Post hires conservative blogger, Salon Magazine, November 23, 2010.
- ^ Rubin to WaPo, by David Weigel at the Slate Magazine.
- ^ Jennifer Rubin, Red Lines for Obama?, July 29, 2009.
- ^ Ali Gharib, Conservative Pundit Jennifer Rubin Joins the Mainstream Media, Columbia Journalism Review, December 7, 2010.
- ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/palestinians-celebrate-and-then-reluctantly-denounce-itamar-murders/2011/03/04/ABNZlOV_blog.html
- ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/palestinian-police-murder-jew-who-sneaks-in-to-worship/2011/03/29/AFVuyRlE_blog.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-turn/2011/01/time_magazine_savages_israel_-.html
- ^ http://mediamatters.org/blog/201107230006
- ^ http://www.americablog.com/2011/07/right-wing-media-norway-terrorist-not.html
- ^ http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/07/25/us-islamophobes-try-to-change-subject-on-anti-muslim-norwegian-mass-murderer/
- ^ Why Jews Hate Palin, "Commentary Magazine", January 2010.
- ^ "The 3 Biggest Problems With 'Why Jews Hate Palin'", The Atlantic Wire, January 14, 2010.
- ^ The Washington Post Owes the World an Apology for this Item, "The Atlantic", July 23, 2011.
- ^ [1]
- ^ Jeffrey Goldberg, On Suspecting al Qaeda in the Norway Attacks, "The Atlantic", July 23, 2011.
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3]
- ^ [4]
- ^ [5]
- ^ http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/gadfly/washington-posts-jennifer-rubin-promotes-call-palestinian-genocide
- ^ http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/2011102714295818558.html
References
- Jennifer Rubin Starts at the Washington Post, Weekly Standard, November 30, 2010.
External links
- Jennifer Rubin: Right Turn (Washington Post)
- Jennifer Rubin: Weekly Standard articles
- Jennifer Rubin: Human Events columns
- Glenn Greenwald: Why the Washington Post won’t fire Jennifer Rubin (Salon.com, 12 November 2011)