Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed sleeps in a Bin Laden jersey at an October 9 campaign appearance with Republican nominee Mike Rogers. AP reports that Rogers laughed. El-Sayed is Muslim. Apparently that was enough material for the visiting senator.
The clip shared by reporter Julian Andreone places Kennedy's line in a discussion of AIPAC's involvement in the race. The operative words are worth keeping:
"sleeps in a Bin Laden jersey"
A jersey identifies a fan. Kennedy's joke therefore asks the audience to picture a Muslim candidate as a supporter of the man responsible for September 11. Calling it a joke does not remove the accusation. It is the mechanism for making the accusation without having to prove it.
I would love to see the policy argument hidden inside the sleepwear. There isn't one. A disagreement about Israel or a lobbying group's campaign spending can be argued with evidence. The line Kennedy chose substitutes a terrorist for the person on the ballot.
Rogers matters here, too. This was his race and his opponent. He did not have to deliver the smear himself to help make it acceptable. A laugh from the candidate standing beside the speaker tells the room that the remark belongs at the campaign appearance.
That observation has a limit. Laughter does not establish every private belief Rogers holds. It does establish his public response to this particular remark. We can judge that response without pretending to read his mind.
El-Sayed answered on October 10 with a jab about Kennedy wearing his bed sheets outside at night. The comeback is satisfying. It is also separate from the question Michigan voters should be asking: why does a Senate campaign need to turn its Muslim opponent into a terrorism punchline?
We recently documented the earlier Ted Cruz appearance involving El-Sayed. This is a different incident. Keeping them separate makes the record stronger, because nobody needs to splice several events together to understand what Kennedy did here.
Religious bigotry is the precise description. Islam is not a race. That distinction does not make the smear harmless, and it does not require us to pretend the treatment of Muslim Americans sits outside a site concerned with who gets treated as fully American.
A candidate can be questioned hard about his record. He can be criticized about foreign policy. He should not have to answer for a terrorist because a senator has decided his religion supplies the connection. Kennedy supplied the smear. Rogers supplied the laugh. Neither supplied the evidence.
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