In his lifetime of political prominence, 9th
District congressman Steve Cohen has been lucky in his network of friends
– ranging from the late state Senator James White, who in acquiring a
judgeship three decades back backed Cohen as a long-term successor, to
ever-loyal mega-developer and political maven Henry Turley, to former
lieutenant governor John Wilder, to the late music legend Warren Zevon,
to the venerable Detroit congressman John Conyers, on whose Judiciary
Committee the freshman Democrat now serves. (With apologies to all those many
left out of the list.)
Cohen has also been fortunate, from time to time, in the
nature of his enemies.
Not to downgrade the Rev. LaSimba Gray, who has his accomplishments, but
Gray’s espousal of color-line politics in the 9th District and his
all-out assault on federal Hate Crimes legislation have not exactly made him an
exemplary advocate for an alternative to Cohen.
Gray, however, has been sagacity itself compared to Cohen’s
latest foe – one George Brooks, a minister in Murfreesboro way off in
Middle Tennessee, who recently authored and distributed a flyer bearing the
incendiary slogan, “Steve Cohen and the Jews Hate Jesus.”
Not only is that message slanderous concerning the Jewish
faith; it also belies the actual predilections of the congressman himself. In
the course of a lengthy interview in 2001 for a profile in Memphis
Magazine, Cohen demonstrated both a familiarity with and a fondness for the
ministry of Jesus and noted that, in his upbringing, he and his family had
participated in Christmas observances even while keeping to the tenets of
Judaism.
The nature of these onslaughts against Cohen had surely
created problems for the congressman’s only declared election opponent, Nikki
Tinker, who, insofar as she has campaigned at all this year, has kept the
same distance from issues as such that she did during her first try for the
office in 2006. Generally speaking, too, she has kept a distance from reporters
and was not heard from during last year’s locally generated controversy over
Hate Crimes. It may have been unfair to impute her solidarity with views like
Rev. Gray’s, but her silence made it possible for many to do so.
Nor did Tinker come front and center during the immediate
outcry over Rev. Brooks’ flyer, though a campaign spokesman made statements to
The Commercial Appeal that amounted to a disavowal of the minister’s
slurs. But ultimately Tinker herself, interviewed on camera by WMC-TV’s
Kontji Anthony, would say this: “I would not
stand for any attacks on the Jewish faith or any other faith for that matter and
I just want to make sure everybody knows that Nikki Tinker doesn’t play those
types of politics.”
One can empathize with Tinker.
Assuming the absence of common cause between herself and such other declared
adversaries of Rep. Cohen as those cited above (and, failing evidence to the
contrary, she is entitled to the benefit of the doubt), the axiom that best
applies to her case is: With friends like that, who needs enemies?
And, unlike the case in 2006,
when she was but one of a dozen or so active competitors for the congressional
seat, Tinker is one-on-one with the incumbent now, and she should know that the
pressure for her to be explicit on contentious issues is likely to mount, and
mount progressively.
