Penny wise

Wow. Suddenly, Mark Sanford looks like the classy South Carolina Republican:

Two Republican county officials in South Carolina have apologized after they disparaged Jews in a newspaper op-ed in support of a fiscally conservative U.S. senator.

The chairmen, Edwin Merwin Jr. and Jim Ulmer, wrote the newspaper in backing Republican Sen. Jim DeMint's opposition to congressional earmarks.

"There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves," according to the piece published Sunday in The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg.

[. . .]

They "apparently believed that the image of the Jew as penny-pincher was a praise of Jewish frugality," Matthew Brooks said. "In fact, it dates back to the centuries of anti-Jewish persecution in Europe, when Jews were forbidden to own land or conduct any business other than money-lending, which was closed to Christians by Church law. . . ."

It wasn't even a slip of the tongue. It was in an op-ed, which means they had the time if not the inclination to actually think about what they said. Did they have an actual conversation in which one said, "Boy, I hope nobody takes the remark about penny-pinching Jews the wrong way"? Did either of them think it would have sounded a lot better just to write, "As Benjamin Franklin said about pennies and dollars . . ."?

That's not true, by the way. While your busy watching those pennies, the dollars are going to fly right out the door. Franklin also said "A penny saved is a penny earned," which makes no sense, either.