Usually Tom Brokaw is very good at appearing credible. That's what he's paid for more than anything else, of course. The media bosses don't want the lemmings doubting the party line, and so Brokaw tries very hard to give an impression of honesty, of trustworthiness, of folksy credibility. And usually he's pretty good at it. But some things he reports are just too fantastic to believe. One of the most unbelievable things I have ever heard him say was a recent report he gave that our new Jewish secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, had just discovered that she is a Jewess, that she had no inkling of her Jewishness before becoming secretary of state. Brokaw gave us a little hocus pocus about Jewish tombstones in Prague and Jewish grandparents who had disappeared at Auschwitz, and how these things had been revealed very recently to Albright, surprising her greatly and leading her to the conclusion that she is not really the Gentile Episcopalian she formerly had thought she was, but a Jewess. Wow!

Now, I've been telling the world for the last four years that Madeleine Albright is Jewish. I knew, of course, about her pretense to Episcopalianism, but I also knew many other things about her -- including the fact that both her parents were Jews from the former Czechoslovakia. And now she is trying to persuade us peasants, with the help of the media bosses, that she didn't know. That is just not credible, no matter how hard Tom Brokaw tries to keep a straight face when he tells us.

Gee, all Madeleine had to do was look in a mirror at any time during the last 59 years to know what she was. Shades of Golda Meier! Are we supposed to believe that Madeleine's totally pro-Israel policy throughout her public life was based on a belief that she was a Gentile? Are we supposed to believe that her hawkish, bloodthirsty policy toward everyone else in the Middle East besides Israel has had nothing to do with her Jewishness? Are we supposed to believe that all of her Jewish political connections and the fact that she already had surrounded herself with Jewish advisors and assistants at the State Department are just coincidences? Are we supposed to believe the top politicians in Washington didn't know she is Jewish, and the Senate just rubber-stamped her appointment to be secretary of state because they like her looks? Are we supposed to believe that the media bosses have been in love with her for the same reason?

Come on, now! Everybody knew what Madeleine was, except the general public. At the time Clinton nominated her to be secretary of state the Jewish newspapers were ecstatic -- that is, the Jewish newspapers that only Jews are supposed to read, where you usually can get some hint of what they're really thinking, unlike the Jewish newspapers for Gentile consumption, like the New York Times and the Washington Post. These were happy with her too, of course, but they naturally cited reasons more likely to appeal to non-Jews to explain their happiness. The Arab newspapers were very unhappy about her appointment and referred to her Jewishness as a reason for their unhappiness. Now Madeleine and the New York Times want us to believe that the Arabs knew she was a Jew, but she didn't know. And the New York Times also is telling us, "Don't worry. Her being a Jew won't change the way she does her job as secretary of state." In an editorial on February 6 the New York Times also told us that Madeleine has a "strong record of support for . . . human rights." They're talking about the same Madeleine Albright who last year on the interview program 60 Minutes said that causing the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children with an embargo which keeps food and medicine out of Iraq was a reasonable price to pay in order to keep Saddam Hussein from threatening Israel. Some humanitarian!

We've let Madeleine and her kinsmen in the media get away with so much for so long that they believe that they can get away with anything now. They believe that they can tell us any kind of whopper, and we'll believe it.

The thing that I'm wondering about is why did she choose this time to make her Jewishness public? Earlier, when she married one of the few Gentiles with some influence in the mass media, she found it advantageous to pretend to be Episcopalian. Now that she has become secretary of state in the most Jewish government this country has ever had, why did she choose to reveal her true identity? I have some ideas about this, but no proof yet. I hope that I'm wrong, but I'm afraid that within the next year or two we'll all find out why this thoroughly obnoxious, aggressive, and pushy Jewess has come out of the closet at this time.