Comeback yid: rabbi lapin makes the glenn beck mainstage

He's back! (that's him, ironically, on the far left)

Disgraced former Seattle talk host Rabbi Daniel Lapin, in his role again as "show rabbi of the religious right," appeared onstage Saturday to help Glenn Beck "non-politically" reclaim Martin Luther King legacy for himself.

Beck gathered every religious leader in America corrupt enough to be publicly associated with him. The charming, yarmulka-ed Dan Lapin, not surprisingly, was front and center. (Restoring Honor?..." Daniel Lapin?)

The didactic Lapin can be tedious; to boot, it was the Sabbath, so he couldn't use the microphone. Hence, for those live-streaming, watching teevee, or not on the dais, Lapin's speech was just so much arm-waving. (Shows Beck was so desperate to have the imprimatur of a rabbi standing on his stage, he took Lapin despite there was no chance his voice could be heard. Need a Jew to tread where Jews ne'er dare to tread? Dan's your man, will travel. Bet he doesn't come cheap, either).

Lapin has long been a sort of "pet Jew" for the usually Jew-distrusting Christians and right-wingers. He's "one of the good ones," a KVI listener once told us.

Someone gave Alternet a recap of Lapin's speech: he described America as "a precious flower" that could not be separated from its religious roots. His four-part challenge to attendees: study the Bible, make more money, buy his books and CD's, and say extra prayers for America.

Lapin's off again on again Sunday radio show on San Francisco's KSFO is off again. He closed down his brokered KTTH Sunday show in 2006 after the fall, and has had a diminished local profile after intense media, Congressional and Justice Department scrutiny of his pal, lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Lapin got very close to the levers of power during the Bush years. Fatefully, he was the one who introduced sleazy House whip Tom Delay to his old friend, Abramoff.

When the Abramoff fraud apparatus imploded, Lapin had to fold his longtime not-for-too-much profit organization, Toward Tradition whose two-term and founding board president was Abramoff. (Another board member: host and BFF, Michael Medved (KTTH m-f 12-3p). TT was exposed as one of a cluster of tax-exempt organizations through which Abramoff secretly routed tribal Indian and other gambling clients' funds to an aide to DeLay in return for favorable legislation. Almost comic relief around the Senate hearings were Lapin's embarrassing but "jocular" emails agreeing to gin up some fake awards and credentials from TT to help get Abramoff into a elite DC club.

Abramoff went off to prison, but no charges were filed against the small fish, Lapin. But in his secular/political world, though, the revelations meant he was a dead fish. He makes his living now speaking on Biblical Greed to fundamentalist Christian and Jewish conventions, retreats and evangelical hoedowns. He spends a lot of time in Texas according to his website.

Raised the son of a famous (he says) Orthodox rabbi in white separatist, supremacist South Africa in the 1950's, he has a long record of crazy-pants talk about the supremacy of Judeo-Christianity and its elevation of Europe and America over the heathen wogs and kafirs of Asia and Africa. (OK, 'heathen wogs' is Rudyard Kipling). In fact, Lapin has declared many times that non Judeo-Christian cultures and secular liberalism are closer to the animal world than God's Own.

He delighted blow-dried KKK "thinker" David Duke who used Lapin's words to buttress his and Adolf Hitler's belief that liberal Jews are largely responsible for "filth and debasement" of Western culture. The amazing thing," wrote Duke, "is that there are so few honest voices like that of Rabbi Lapin." Lapin has defended holocaust deniers and says "enough already" about all this Holocaust stuff.

This, from a piece we did on him in the SF Bay Guardian:

 His mission, as stated on his Web site, is "standing astride America's secular path to decline, decadence, and depravity." But his version of Judeo-Christianity looks like a right-wing Republican wish list. Lapin believes that currency and capital markets are revelations granted by God to the Jews and passed on to Christians.
  As a man of God, he not only supports stable marriages, family life, faithfulness, and integrity, but (along, he says, with God) favors tax cuts, property rights, sodomy laws, school prayers, school vouchers, arranged marriages, and elimination of government social programs. He opposes promiscuity, abortion, homosexuality, welfare, crime, funding for the arts, gun control, environmental laws, and black people giving their kids "funny" names.
  "Recycling," Lapin told the Guardian, "is the sacred sacrament of secularism." He told KSFO listeners recently that saying a prayer over your dead pets is sick and bizarre.

Fighting recycling is pretty tame compared to the war on seculars, apostates, Democrats and other heathens Lapin says he and his friends are waging against us and our friends:

"I am absolutely convinced that God is far from finished with the story of the United States of America," he said. "First of all, [there's] the matter of the little battle that must be fought, just as it was in the 19th century." There were, and are, "two incompatible moral visions for this country. We had to settle it then. We're going to have to settle it now. I hope not with blood, not with guns, but we're going to have to settle it nonetheless. The good news is that I think our side is finally ready to settle it. Roll up its sleeves, take off its jacket, and get a little bloody. Spill a little blood. We'll settle it. And we'll win. And then there's no holding us back." (emphasis ours). 

Expect Lapin to use his new connection to Glenn Beck's media for entrée back in from his desert of shame. We, for one, hope Americans can resist such an easy redemption.

The BlatherWatch Lapin files:

Rabbi daniel lapin: Show rabbi of the racists

Rabbi daniel lapin: a long look backward

Rabbi Daniel lapin: "The man who stands by his scandal-ridden friends"

Rabbi Daniel Lapin: More National Embarrassment

Rabbi daniel lapin falls on hard times...

The rabbi with the tinfoil yarmulke (and we thought he was just boring...)

SF Bay Guardian: Rabid rabbi

Seattle Times: Rabbi daniel lapin abramoff connections

Seattle Weekly: Meet the lapin brothers

 

Links

Comments

[Hen3ry]

The man is my Rabbi, Michael. Why don't you leave him alone? I'll put up with the liberal crap, but anti-semiticicism? You're better than that Mike.

[woody held]

So Lapin was 'close to the levers of power' but 'small fish.' Which is it?

[Sandy Merwin]

Lapin is a wannabe, but morally bankrupt, and corrupt. Abramoff took many cronies down with him, Bauer, Norquist, Ney, but none made me smile as much as when he brought down the haughty Lapin. He's lucky he didn't get indicted. protect us from those who claim their god is the almighty!

[Obama is a black man]

Disgraced? I think not. I fondly remember his Sunday night wisdom on KVI in the '90s.

I think Hood is a Jew so I'll give a pass on his obvious anti-semite comments.

Folks...my predictions are coming true. The markets are collapsing, the economy is spiraling down and liberals are panicking.

The tsunami is on its way.

The experiment has failed.

DOW below 9500 on election day.

Freedom 1/20/13!

[Obama is not Bush]

Obama is the black president, and it is President Obama. There is no viable candidate on the right other than a 2 year governor and some pussy whipped man to run with her.

[Obama is a black man]

Once again here's an accurate prediction:

The candidate that will beat Obama (ala Carter's loss in 1980) will emerge late in the process and will win nearly 45 states. Done.

[dave, not dave ross]

and ron and don still have the top show on kiro, oops

[Leg-up]

Hood is a self-loathing Jewish anti-semite. Too bad he's not a real Jew like Rabbi Lapin and Michael Medved. Then he wouldn't have to apologize for being a Jew, he could kick some ass.

[Goldy]

Self-loathing? Maybe. Jewishish... sorta. But Jewish? No... Michael is not Jewish.

But I am, and don't see anything anti-semitic about this post. Rabbi Lapin is, as Michael describes him, a "pet Jew" of the Christian far right, and an apparently corrupt associate of Abramoff.

[Regime changer]

Hood looks Jewish and I once saw him sitting in his car eating chicken over by Seward Park.

[Obama is a better community organizer]

Are we to believe the faux blogger - Goldilocks ? This coming November - it won't be just right... LMAO.

[Obama is a Black President]

OIABM, I have something for your Obama derangement syndrome, do some good in the world and smile. It’ll do your sad and drab hart some good and it may get you out of the click early.

[Mercifurious]

The man is my Rabbi, Michael. Why don't you leave him alone? I'll put up with the liberal crap, but anti-semiticicism? You're better than that Mike.

On behalf of the true Jewish community (sans Medved, Lapin, Sharky), OY whatta fucking schmuck

Lapin (and Medved) are pure GOP apologists and tokens. Watch their behavior: any time a Repub and/or Evangelical is chastised for anti-semitism, they throw down and defend them AGAINST US!

Case-and-point: even to this day, and with his recent remarks, Lapin and Medved defend anti-semite Mel against their own people.

Note: I use the word "us" loosely. Your phony outrage and teabagger spelling ("anti-semiticicism") rings so gentile.

Go watch "The Passion" (again) and weep (again) w/ your true brethren.

[YHVHdaughter]

Typical leftist chicanery here...making mountains out of insignificant and subjective mole hills, shooting the messenger, and even evoking racism (this time in the form of antisemitism)...all in the effort of deflecting from the message.

What a pathetic waste of time! Anybody growing tired of this juvenile tactic yet?

[Tommy008]

Medved was a pumper/fanboy for Christine O'Donell, and thought she had a good chance of winning in Delaware. bwahahahahahahaah You get the picture as to why i haven't listened to a full 15 minute segment of his show for years. He has simply lost any credibility, with stunts like this,