B’nai B’rith President David M. Blumberg Issued a statement today declaring that he found no evidence in the White House transcripts released Monday to warrant charges of anti-Semitism against President Nixon.
In a conversation between the President and then-White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman in the transcript of June 23, 1972, Nixon recommended that his daughters avoid museums and art functions while campaigning for him because, “The arts you know–they’re Jews, they’re left-wing–in other words, stay away.”
Blumberg said, “The President’s unfortunate remarks, read in the cold print of the transcript, is a sorry example of crude stereotyping. But weighed against his actual relations with Jews and the Jewish community–and on personal judgements drawn from several White House meetings with him–I find no evidence to charge Mr. Nixon of being anti-Semitic.” Blumberg warned that in the context of the complicity of the Watergate affair, this particular incident should not be exaggerated.
In New York, Howard M. Squadron, chairman of the National Governing Council of the American Jewish Congress, said. “We are dismayed that President Nixon should have stooped to linking “Jews’ with ‘left-wing’ politics. It represents a way of thinking that classifies people by ethnic stereotype and repeats a calumny that the overwhelming majority of Americans have long ago rejected.” Squadron continued, “We are shocked to read such a libel against the Jewish community in the name of the President of the United States.”
Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R. NY), who was the author of the bill creating the National Endowment of the Arts, which last year had a budget of $61 million and is presently being considered by Congress for an allocation of $82 million, called the President’s comments “extremely distasteful.”
Art officials from institutions throughout the country reacted with shock and confusion to Nixon’s words in the transcripts, pointing to the President’s strong support of the arts during his administration. “It’s a shocking statement coming especially from a man who has done so much for the arts,” said Kenneth Donahue, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
A spokesman for Nancy Hanks, chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, said that Ms. Hanks “assumes that the President’s and his family’s record in support of the arts and enjoyment of them through the years speaks more to the point than the words of the transcripts.”
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