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Billy Graham's 1972 comments still drawing fire
Over the last week, Billy Graham's 1972 Oval Office comments about Jews have continued to draw reaction from newspapers and magazines. While earlier in the week most pundits were suggesting that the evangelist was merely blinded by power and just "went along" with Nixon's anti-Semitism to maintain good relations with the president, comments later in the week were distinctly harsher.

On the on the other side of the Atlantic, however, the comments are both harsh and satiric. John Sutherland's column in The Guardian is ironic. "Graham has always been close to the Republican White House," notes Sutherland. "He was, not long after schmoozing anti-semitically with Nixon, the man who saved young George Bush from the demon drink. What did the Reverend say during those closeted hours of spiritual counselling—that America's breweries and distilleries were owned by 'Satanic Jews'? No tapes, unfortunately."

Writing in The Nation, Robert Scheer largely keeps the focus on Richard Nixon's end of the conversation, but he doesn't let either man off the hook. "When we are busy condemning national chauvinism, religious hatred and war crimes abroad, it is no time to whitewash our own past. To utter such thoughts invites the riposte that one seeks to weaken our nation rather than strengthen it," Scheer writes. "Thankfully, this country has a clear history of questioning sanctimonious expressions of authority, and the release of these tapes, however late, is a clear example of that."

Much of the questioning now seems to be how much the comments represent Graham's "real" views. Of course, much of the question is raised by Graham's own statement, "They [Jews] don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country."

"Was Graham really this anti-Semitic, or was he seeking to enhance his own position by feeding Nixon's paranoia?" asked Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Sally Kalson. "The answer appears to be both. … Graham is 83 now and frail. Anyone who's been around that long might have forgotten the ethnic slurs he uttered 30 years ago, and also might have undergone a sincere change of heart. Then again, some old prejudices never die; they just learn to dress a lot nicer. Which description fits Graham is not for me to say; I can't see into the man's heart."

One of Kalson's fellow columnists at the Post-Gazette, Dennis Roddy, also weighed in. He talked about how Graham differed from his mentor, Mordecai Ham ("a revivalist who considered Jews 'beyond redemption.' … Once he had pitched tent in a given town, he would denounce, by name, local Jewish merchants"). And Graham was good friends with Harry Golden, editor and publisher of The Carolina Israelite.

I suspect that Billy Graham really did love Harry Golden very much. … It is possible for a man to dislike an entire people and yet delude himself into thinking he can love one of its constituent members. … But it is also possible that a bit of Mordecai Ham found its way into Graham's marrow. Just as Harry Golden could no more have abandoned his roots as a Jew than Graham could have cast aside his Biblical fundamentalism, our lives are a constant struggle between what we are born to be and what we choose to become. Reconciling those two is how we grow. It is how a man becomes, in the words of Billy Graham, "a missionary in himself."

Over at the St. Petersburg Times, columnist Mary Jo Melone isn't cutting the evangelist any slack. "Billy Graham fell off the pedestal on which he had stood so long," she wrote. "The frailty of his humanity was revealed. He had been poisoned by the same prejudices that afflict the rest of us. His words shock only because of who he is. But they don't surprise. Anti-Semitism … runs deep, in high places and low."

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March (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46