Sarah Silverman’s ‘Great Schlep’

The Great Schlep, organized by the Jewish Council for Education and Research, was a bust, said Damien Cave in The New York Times. Comedian Sarah Silverman’s Web video urging “young Jews to get their lazy rotund rear ends to Florida to persuade their grandparents to vote for Senator Barack Obama” may have been viewed seven million times, but only about 100 people actually showed for the Columbus Day weekend pilgrimage.

Blame it on “youthful ennui, or liberal complacence,” said Allison Ford in Examiner.com. “Even Silverman herself didn't make the trip.” She doesn't even have grandparents in Florida. But hopefully “the few schleppers that did turn out managed to convert a few bubbes and zaides that Obama's not really a scary black man.”

It’s really offensive that Silverman suggests “elderly Jews are racist,” said Mark Hemingway in the National Review Online. And it’s one thing to make “those kinds of jokes just for the sake of social commentary,” but “quite another when you do it to shill for someone.” The Great Schlep isn’t even necessary—“Jews as a demographic traditionally vote overwhelmingly Democratic anyway.”

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Well, those hundred-or-so young people made their grandparents in Florida “very happy,” said Christopher Weber in AOL’s Political Machine. What's more, it looks like the Great Schlep is “working—Obama appears to be pulling ahead in the Sunshine State.” Apparently, “Sarah Silverman is a political force to be reckoned with.”