Another Rough Week for Felix

George Felix Allen had another rough week--one that could have easily been a good one for him. At a debate in Tyson's Corner--an area easily accessible to the national media working in Washington--he was asked whether any of his ancestors were Jewish and, if they were, at what point his family had lost its Jewish identity. Some of the members of the audience began booing the reporter who asked the question; Allen bristled and accused her of casting aspersions on a person's ancestry by asking about religion. It looked like a bit win for Felix. Hell, even I had some mild feelings that the question was out of line, although I couldn't see any harm in answering it. Maybe with all of the unrest in the Middle East and Israel at the center of that unrest, it could influence his thinking on Middle East policy. Or not.
But life's not so simple for Felix. The next day, he released a statement that his mother, in fact, was born and raised Jewish and his grandfather had been imprisoned by the Nazis in World War II for being Jewish. He just learned about all this. And, of course, he's just as proud as he can be of his Jewish ancestors. I can just imagine his wife, Susan, racing around trying to put together a Rosh Hashanah celebration for him.
But even that wasn't quite so simple. First, a Charlottesville newspaper, in 2003, had published a statement that Felix had Jewish ancestors. It's the only statement of the thousands made about him in his public life for which he has ever demanded a correction. And Forward, a Jewish publication had run a similar statement more recently. So the question becomes one of just when Felix was lying. Was he lying when he demanded a "correction" from the Charlottesville newspaper, or was he completely in the dark about his family history? Did he try to find out any more about his heritage before the more recent statement in Forward? If not, what ever happened to curiosity? Did he know, when he castigated Jan Fox for her question, that he was, according to rabbinical law, Jewish? And if he did know, why was he so upset?
His mother, Etty Allen, is taking the fall for him. She says that she hid her Jewish background from everyone--her husband, her in-laws, her kids, her neighbors, and everybody--and told Cowboy Felix about it only when he sat her down in the privacy of her own kitchen and easnestly asked her. She hadn't wanted him to be traumatized as she was when she was a child and the Nazis were goosestepping all around her. Except that she wasn't raising her kids in Tunisia but in the nation whose armies destroyed the Nazis in Europe and Africa. And Cowboy Felix wouldn't have learned this otherwise?
I wonder what his Council of Conservative Citizens buddies, who don't much like anybody but white Protestants, like their newly Jewish buddy, Cowboy Felix. I wonder how many Virginia voters will see that he's got a serious lack of curiosity about his identity. And I certainly hope that there are many who were taught, as I was, that family is identity, and if you are honest about nothing else, you must be honest about that.