I'd hardly be so generous as to even give the benefit of the doubt in limiting it to Schumer. Xenophobia is the rising flavor of the era and I don't imagine a deflating US economy in the face of increasingly obviously lost foreign wars is going to make red-state America any less inclined to run with it.

I doubt any New York politician is going to have much good to say about Arabo-Muslims anytime soon. Or is it anti-Semitic to even hint at the Israeli lobby these days?

Chuck Schumer has been fairly popular with his constituents, but he *is* one of the most fervent defenders of Israel and no doubt has imbibed some of the generalised suspicion of things Arab and Muslim that comes with being on the right-wing of Israel supporters.

The thing is, if you are an aspiring US politician, you really have very little to lose - and potentially a lot to gain - by making racist statements about Arabs, so long of course as you sanitise them with a few 'terrorist financing' lines. It's not about racism, you know, it's all about national security and the 'war on terror.'

Part of this is the fault of the Arab governments of course. If they spoke out about it, and much more to the point, threatened some sort of retribution - ie. indicated that they might reconsider their business interests in the US, their willingness to host US military facilities in their countries etc - then this overt and unchallenged racism would not, and could not, happen. But of course, these governments are far too keen to placate the US and can tolerate a bit (or quite a bit) of racism and bigotry so long as their own place is secure.

The thing is, if you are an aspiring US politician, you really have very little to lose - and potentially a lot to gain - by making racist statements about Arabs, so long of course as you sanitise them with a few 'terrorist financing' lines. It's not about racism, you know, it's all about national security and the 'war on terror.'

Part of this is the fault of the Arab governments of course. If they spoke out about it, and much more to the point, threatened some sort of retribution - ie. indicated that they might reconsider their business interests in the US, their willingness to host US military facilities in their countries etc - then this overt and unchallenged racism would not, and could not, happen. But of course, these governments are far too keen to placate the US and can tolerate a bit (or quite a bit) of racism and bigotry so long as their own place is secure.

Ignorance--at least on the part of the politician--has nothing to do with it. If demagoguery sells, then demagoguery it shall be. If the entire Arab or Muslim looks alike to the voters in America and nobody is willing to spend time understanding the details, it's not politicians' job to do the explaining--whether they know something or not. Horrible? Sure, but we have to have the politicians doing the politicking with the voters we got...sadly.