{"id":196,"date":"2006-12-06T18:04:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-06T18:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html"},"modified":"2006-12-06T18:04:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-06T18:04:00","slug":"do-clothes-make-politician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html","title":{"rendered":"Do Clothes Make the Politician?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a fact: In public life, we often tend to make judgments based on appearances. If someone looks or acts different enough from us, we tend to believe his or her views are outside of the mainstream as well. For politicians in particular, being considered &#8220;out of the mainstream&#8221; is damaging, and this raises some interesting questions when their religious beliefs cause them to act or look different from the American norm.<\/p>\n<p>The current tempest in a teapot is over the (entirely irrelevant) question of <a href=\"http:\/\/time.blogs.com\/daily_dish\/2006\/11\/mormon_sacred_u.html\">whether Mitt Romney and Harry Reid wear Mormon undergarments<\/a>. And there\u2019s the despicable comment by commentator Dennis Prager that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.townhall.com\/Columnists\/DennisPrager\/2006\/11\/28\/america,_not_keith_ellison,_decides_what_book_a_congressman_takes_his_oath_on\">newly elected Muslim congressman Keith Ellison\u2019s desire to take his oath of office on a Qur&#8217;an rather than a Bible \u201cundermines American civilization.<\/a>\u201d In each case, a politician\u2019s integrity is being called into question, either implicitly or explicitly, because his religious beliefs may cause him to behave differently from what we\u2019ve come to expect.<\/p>\n<p>Both of these non-issues will blow over because they are not so highly visible\u2013Ellison swearing on the Qu&#8217;ran<span> <\/span><em>looks<\/em> like Christian politicians swearing on the Bible, and the silly Mormon undergarment flap obviously takes place out of sight. But it\u2019s an interesting question how Americans would react to a politician whose religious beliefs or practices looked really different\u2013say, a female Muslim politician who wears <em>hijab<\/em> (headcovering), or a Sikh who wears a turban. Put differently, would <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/70\/story_7056_1.html\">Sen. Joseph Lieberman<\/a>, an observant Jew, have been able to achieve the broad national success he has if he wore a <em>kippah<\/em> (skullcap) or had <em>tzitzit<\/em> (ritual fringes) hanging out from under his jacket?<\/p>\n<p>The irony is that appearance is a lousy basis for deciding how extreme a politician\u2019s religious views might be since, with the exception of groups like the Amish, Christian piety doesn\u2019t generally express itself in distinctive garb. Believing that if someone looks like you they will think like you is as great a fallacy as the idea that if people look and dress distinctively, their views will not only be different, but in tension with your own.<\/p>\n<p>When we make decisions about our politicians based on superficial features rather than their policies and positions on the issues, we only promote a system that favors superficial politicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a fact: In public life, we often tend to make judgments based on appearances. If someone looks or acts different enough from us, we tend to believe his or her views are outside of the mainstream as well. For politicians in particular, being considered &#8220;out of the mainstream&#8221; is damaging, and this raises some&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Do Clothes Make the Politician? - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Do Clothes Make the Politician? - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It&#8217;s a fact: In public life, we often tend to make judgments based on appearances. If someone looks or acts different enough from us, we tend to believe his or her views are outside of the mainstream as well. For politicians in particular, being considered &#8220;out of the mainstream&#8221; is damaging, and this raises some&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-12-06T18:04:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Do Clothes Make the Politician? - Virtual Talmud","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Do Clothes Make the Politician? - Virtual Talmud","og_description":"It&#8217;s a fact: In public life, we often tend to make judgments based on appearances. If someone looks or acts different enough from us, we tend to believe his or her views are outside of the mainstream as well. For politicians in particular, being considered &#8220;out of the mainstream&#8221; is damaging, and this raises some&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html","og_site_name":"Virtual Talmud","article_published_time":"2006-12-06T18:04:00+00:00","author":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html","name":"Do Clothes Make the Politician? - Virtual Talmud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-12-06T18:04:00+00:00","dateModified":"2006-12-06T18:04:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/53c806e36632262087fa251c621f2bc9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2006\/12\/do-clothes-make-politician.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Do Clothes Make the Politician?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/","name":"Virtual Talmud","description":"Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, where politics and pop culture meet 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/53c806e36632262087fa251c621f2bc9","name":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/417\/4170a8452a509d8efe19496bf5d566e9x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/417\/4170a8452a509d8efe19496bf5d566e9x96.jpg","caption":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/author\/estern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}