The Senator's Gentile Rebuke

But that was nothing compared with what Allen gave Fox.

The anchor may have thought she had license to pop the Jewish question when Allen, reacting to the "macaca" question, volunteered that his grandfather "was incarcerated by the Nazis in World War II."

Citing reports about his "possible Jewish ancestry," Fox questioned Allen's past denial that his mother is Jewish.

"I'm glad you all have that reaction," Allen said to the audience as people jeered the questioner. Allen lectured Fox about the importance of "freedom of religion and not making aspersions about people because of their religious beliefs."

In between his heckling of Fox, Allen reported that "my mother is French-Italian with a little bit of Spanish blood in her, and I've been raised, and she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian." That's not inconsistent with the Forward report, which said the Lumbrosos, forcibly converted in Portugal, escaped to Livorno and became traders with branches in Tunis.

Fox took a long drink from her water bottle. In the second round of questions, she chose the relative safety of Iraq, saying, "I don't think this question will get me booed."

"I was shocked," she said after the event. Disclosing that her great-grandfather was a Mormon polygamist, she added: "Why would he get so angry at the suggestion there might be something in your background that's Jewish? I don't think that's a bad thing at all."

Fox said her motive was curiosity. "I thought it was important to find out is this part of his heritage, because if it is nobody knows it. Do you deny part of your heritage for political reasons?"

Allen, surrounded by cameras and microphones after the event, hadn't cooled down. "What do you mean, 'make me so angry'?" he demanded angrily when asked why Fox's query had made him so angry.

"To make whatever sort of comment that was, you just don't judge people by their ethnicity or their religion," Allen said, fuming that Fox would "drag my mother into this." The senator said his mother was the one who taught him about tolerance. "Because," he repeated, "my mother's father was incarcerated by the Nazis in World War II."