NEWS!!!!!

• John McCain returned to work in Washington for the first time since losing the presidential election.
• Paul McCartney and Guns n' Roses will both make their upcoming albums available on MySpace before they will be released for sale.
• Wal-Mart has struck a deal with Duke Energy to power hundreds of its stores using wind energy.
• The New York Times has taken a strong editorial position, recommending that you wear a sparkly dress at your office Christmas party this year.
• Al-Qaeda apparently missed the memo about Barack Obama secretly being a Muslim hellbent on destroying America, deeming him a "house negro," with a "heart full of hate."
• Irving Brecher, a pioneer in American comedy who wrote for Milton Berle, the Marx Bros. and George Burns, among others, died yesterday in Los Angeles.
• In a devastating blow to the internation automobile insdustry, Yugos have gone out of production in Serbia.
• Tom Daschle will likely serve as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration.
• Mike Mussina, a pitcher for the New York Yankees of baseball, is expected to retire.
• Tensions are running high between 50 Cent and Taco Bell. Stay tuned for more as this story develops.
• From CNN.com: "Prostitute to Spitzer's wife: 'I'm sorry'"
• Yemen may be running out of oil.
• The Marion Barry of Vietnam has been popped for buying illegal rhino horns in South Africa.
• "There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands."
  - Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.), on the chief executives of GM, Chrysler and Ford attending hearings in Washington yesterday to discuss a possible bailout package for the auto industry.

In his The Culture of Narcissism (1979), Christopher Lasch wrote that “the rise of mass media makes the categories of truth and falsehood irrelevant to an evaluation of their influence. Truth has given way to credibility, facts to statements that sound authoritative without conveying any authoritative information.” Lasch’s examples include “statements implying that a given characteristic belongs uniquely to the product in question when in fact it belongs to its rivals as well.”

Remind you of anything? The presidential candidates between whom we just chose are, as even my most liberal friends freely admit, similar in important respects. Both men spoke frequently of “change,” though only one’s followers reduced it to a creepy mantra, less David Bowie than Spahn Ranch. Both argued for clean energy, Obama tilting at windmills and hybrid cars, McCain asking us to accept the powerful and much-maligned technology already at our disposal. Both sought to address the financial crisis by pouring tax dollars into it.

The differences in their prescribed means were significant but technical, and I hope I won’t sound terribly “elitist” if I speculate that many voters focused on the ends and made their choice on the basis of another factor: marketing strategy. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are made with different “secret formulas,” comprehensible only to chemists, but they end up tasting similar to the casual consumer. Americans are not casual consumers, however, and the ad campaign is all.

What are ad campaigns about if not which of two similar things is cooler? John “Mac Is Back” McCain is undeniably the PC to Barack “Politically Correct” Obama’s Mac. Both function most of the time, crash occasionally, and seem “cool” to radically different demographics. That Obama’s brand of cool has so completely outstripped McCain’s is, at the risk of sounding fuddy-duddyish, worrying.

A friend of mine put the dichotomy well: “I’ve got to say that ‘congressional law professor’ has a better ring to it than ‘shot down five times.’”

No, not to these ears. The corollary of having been shot down five times is having climbed into a ground-attack aircraft five times, despite the risk that, with apologies to Randall Jarrell, you will be washed out of it with a hose. Then there’s the unpleasant matter of what happens when you crash alive behind enemy lines—we’ve heard all about that, though many found it unworthy of consideration—and how you comport yourself in captivity.

Combat vets may snicker at McCain’s “incompetence,” but the rest of us ought to keep in mind that we’d probably pick the toughest law school over a hail of anti-aircraft rounds. As Evan Wright memorably wrote in Generation Kill, “In my civilian world . . . half the people I know are on anti-depressants or anti-panic attack drugs because they can’t handle the stress of a mean boss or a crowd at the 7-Eleven.”

This is not at all to disparage Obama’s impressive educational background, only to argue that courage, honor, and self-sacrifice remain more impressive than educational credentials. The former, by the way, played a large part in John F. Kennedy’s brand of cool, but how much of the “youth vote” has seen PT 109? Obama has a few things in common with JFK. (How much of the “youth vote” knows that Frank Sinatra sang about “High Hopes” for Kennedy’s 1960 campaign? At least that had the audacity of a melody—change you can hum, you might say.) The traits that spring to mind are suavity, a silver tongue, a 10-gigawatt smile, and, yes, credentials.

How did Americans do a 180 on what they find admirable? I place the blame on the marketing geniuses hiding in plain sight: the media. Writers and commentators have aggressively devalued what they either aren’t capable of or can’t demonstrate: courage in extremis. Dissent is patriotic because it’s what we laptop jockeys can pull off without any real risk; risking life and limb can be reduced with a rhetorical flourish to “getting shot down five times.” I have harsh words, too, for those conservative pundits who fawn over the troops or “define torture down” solely because they think it makes them sound tough—if they only knew how transparent that strategy is! Then again, at least it shows that they respect toughness.

It would have been a simple matter to say one prefers Barack Obama but respects John McCain’s bravery and service. But it was difficult to say how many of Obama’s supporters did respect McCain’s bravery and service. N+1’s Mark Greif claimed that the “core conceit” of the GOP convention was that “McCain is already dead,” when in fact its core message was that he’d survived an unthinkable ordeal. Many others pretended to ponder why being tortured was a qualification, shutting their minds to the inconvenient fact of McCain’s superhuman loyalty to his fellow prisoners.

Of course: They knew they wouldn’t have been capable of it. “Just as heroism differs in subtle ways from celebrity,” Lasch wrote, “so hero worship, which esteems the hero’s actions and hopes to emulate them or at least to prove worthy of his example, must be distinguished from narcissistic idealization.” Coolness is no longer a function of what you can scarcely imagine being. It’s an outsize version of what you think you already are.

Slate wasted no time in throwing up a "What now?" quorum discussion for the right in the wake of the GOP's big bruising. Now comes a host of disclosures from the McCain camp itself that Sarah Palin was an accident waiting to happen to the country if their side was victorious.

Newsweek is reporting that Palin's wardrobe expenditures, paid for by the RNC, were even higher than first estimated:

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

A Palin aide said: "Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin."

Even granting the Palin aide the benefit of the doubt only shows that McCain's staff had a bit of a solidarity and loyalty problem brought on by what it saw as a disastrous and ill-conceived choice of a running mate. What sort of interdeparmental leaks and surreptitious backbiting could we have expected to take place in such an administration? Alternatively, if the RNC audits confirm this embarrassing tale, then we're left with the picture of a classless woman stealing from her own cash-poor campaign. Someone had better check to see if all the original aluminum is still attached to the Straight Talk Express.

More troubling still is the news that Palin thought Africa was a country and didn't know which countries were in North America. What liberal gotcha media outlet has loosed these vile lies upon a grateful republic? Fox:

Conservative blogs Hot Air and Ace of Spades are already crying foul, and accusing the McCain apparat of "bullshit" and scapegoating. Of course, if these disgruntled wingers thought as strategically as they wish their party had, they'd keep quiet and let this item bombinate in the left-o-sphere, which is currently preoccupied with happier thoughts. Instead, it's to be recriminations and sour grapes galore.

So here's a question for that Slate roundtable: What can we do to ensure a comeback in the 2062 midterms?

I'll let the poets doing the talking:

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning,
or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,
or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day- at night the party of young
fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

-- Walt Whitman, "I Hear America Singing"

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

-- Langston Hughes, "I, Too, Sing America" (Can we agree, at least tonight, that Hughes' totalitarian politics doesn't take away from the above?) 

UPDATE:  Okay, so I have a big mouth. Read this piece by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (who should never have left the opinion page of the New York Times):

My colleagues and I laughed and shouted, whooped and hollered, hugged each other and cried. My father waited 95 years to see this day happen, and when he called as results came in, I silently thanked God for allowing him to live long enough to cast his vote for the first black man to become president. And even he still can't quite believe it!       

You've got to have ice water in your veins not to be stirred by this stuff, left, right or indifferent.

I feel my critical faculties returning already, but I can't promise I won't be feeding you more of this in the days and weeks to come.  Just to emphasize the difficulties ahead, today, of all days, Israel and Hamas exchanged rocket fire for the first time since June.   

The lines are way too long where I have to vote. Here's what I'm thinking as I wait.
 
Where's the coffee and croissants when you really need them?
 
That's enough small talk.
 
We need two Presidents: One who will focus exclusively on foreign policies, the other who will be responsible for domestic policies. Each area is so complex and demanding that a single President cannot expertly keep up with both or effectively "balance" the demands of one against the other.
 
We need our Presidential elections to start and end within six months. And that's being generous.
 
We need our national candidates to receive free (but equal) access to the airwaves. Paid advertisements and infomercials are obscenely expensive. The money might be better spent on universal health care. Free political advertising is a good idea in general, but even more so when the country is in a deep recession and has mortgaged our children’s' and grandchildren’s' inheritances.
 
No Presidential candidate should be allowed to accept any foreign donations. While we live in one world, Americans do not vote in any European or in Middle Eastern election. Their citizens should not be allowed to "vote" with their dollars in our elections.

If we can send human beings to the Moon, when will we, the people, be able to vote securely and accurately at home on our own computers? Or better yet, why not go back to casting pencil-and-paper votes? It might be better to wait a little longer for the count than to face years of lawsuits.
 
And finally, some feminist thoughts about this moment in history.
 
Let it be known that I voted for Senator Clinton in the primary and that I dressed up to do so.  (Alright, I did not wear a hat or gloves but still, for me, I was super-fashionable.) I felt it was an historic occasion.  Yes, I know, she is not as charismatic an orator as Obama is, she comes with "baggage," but she has put in the time, earned our respect, is credible and trustworthy on the issues.    
 
I am not now nor have I ever been an identity feminist. Like men, women have also internalized sexist values and can often be very hard on other women. Gender does not necessarily predict behavior. Just because a candidate is a woman does not mean that she is a feminist; a man may also be a feminist; and finally, a feminist might also betray his or her own principles.   
 
Thus, going beyond gender: It is as important to have someone in the White House who at least says they hold feminist ideals than to have a particular gender in the White House. One's agenda--not their gender-- is what matters. Senators Obama and Biden "talk" feminism. But I don't like the way in which they and the DNC campaigned against Clinton--nor do I like it that Obama did not offer Clinton the Vice-Presidential spot.
 
From a strictly psychological point of view, just as African-American and bi-racial children, (adults too), will be specially and specifically uplifted by an Obama win, so too would girls and women of all colors have been transformed by the first woman in the White House. Of course, children of both genders and of all colors would be psychologically transformed by seeing either a woman or a person of color in a position of supreme political authority.  
 
Since Clinton won eighteen million votes, I hope that if Obama wins, he offers her a major Cabinet position. She has certainly earned it.
 
I do not think that I will see an American woman who is also a feminist in the White House in my lifetime. I find this tragic. Clinton, however imperfect, met that description. While it might also be transcendent to have an African-American or bi-racial President, it is tragic that women are still waiting, not only for the Presidency but for so much else as well.

In the last few weeks, I’ve seen an admirable conservative newspaper fold, a favorite writer hang himself, and a presidential candidate I assumed I’d be voting for tomorrow disappoint me in ways I hadn’t anticipated. As to that dead writer…

The fact is that John McCain is a genuine hero of the only kind Vietnam now has to offer, a hero not because of what he did but because of what he suffered — voluntarily, for a Code. This gives him the moral authority both to utter lines about causes beyond self-interest and to expect us, even in this age of Spin and lawyerly cunning, to believe he means them. Literally: "moral authority," that old cliché, much like so many other clichés — "service," "honor," "duty," "patriotism" — that have become just mostly words now, slogans invoked by men in nice suits who want something from us. The John McCain we've seen, though — arguing for his doomed campaign-finance bill on the Senate floor in '98, calling his colleagues crooks to their faces on C-Span, talking openly about a bought-and-paid-for government on Charlie Rose in July '99, unpretentious and bright as hell in the Iowa debates and New Hampshire Town Hall Meetings — something about him made a lot of us feel the guy wanted something different from us, something more than votes or money, something old and maybe corny but with a weird achy pull to it like a whiff of a childhood smell or a name on the tip of your tongue, something that would make us think about what terms like "service" and "sacrifice" and "honor" might really refer to, like whether they actually stood for something, maybe.

David Foster Wallace was one of the sincerest members of his generation (which also, by nice coincidence, happens to be Barack Obama's generation), and an encomium like this should not be discounted for its slightly hedged conclusion. Being wary of a person’s honor and selflessness only means you’ve been on the planet long enough to know what to expect. Cynicism can be a snare, but pessimism is the scar on a broken heart. Still, it did once seem, long ago, as if John McCain would rather lose an election than compromise himself by stooping to the level of his opponent, whose “patrician smirk and mangled cant,” as Wallace so aptly put it, was outdone by his base insinuations as to where McCain’s dark-skinned daughter had really come from.

I don’t consider the Vietnam War a great hour for our republic, and I don’t go for flap-flapping nostrums in lieu of moral and intellectual arguments. On foreign policy, I want a president who won’t allow his pragmatism or approval rating to eclipse the necessity of calling a thug a thug and a tyrant a tyrant. On many issues such as capital punishment, gay marriage and the role of religion in the public sphere, I’m to left of the Democratic establishment. I believe the last eight years have been a period of disastrous misrule and demoralization, out of which two unambiguous goods have managed to emerge: the end of Saddam Hussein, and the gasping chance for parliamentary democracy in Iraq.

Conservatism at its best means not being a “maverick,” but taking principled stances when popular opinion is ranged against them, putting yourself in the path of history, which you know is likely to mow you down and your feckless little Stop sign. “I am a man who, reluctantly, grudgingly, step by step, is destroying himself that this country and the faith by which it lives may continue to exist.” That’s how Whittaker Chambers, a true patriot of Dostoevskian complexity, explained his choice to become a national pariah rather than allow the dangers of international Communism go unnoticed. If McCain held my attention this year, it wasn’t only because of his Chambers-like willingness to destroy himself for his country in a southeast Asian prison cell long before I was born. It was also because of his willingness to destroy his political career by advocating an unpopular military policy designed to save a country other than his own, one that had been written off as lost to Hobbesian chaos. No revisionism, in light of the squalidness of his general campaign, will alter the fact that, had the surge failed, so too would have McCain in this year’s primaries.  He was at his most presidential in risking his chance to become president. He was also at his most conservative.

It would take a Sophocles or a Shakespeare to map the degeneration of a man who had got a handle on being “post-partisan” before it was fashionable or electorally remunerative. If I had to unearth the whole offence, I would say the trouble began in South Carolina, in 2000, when McCain witnessed just how nasty the game had got to be played, and just how badly he lost by choosing not to play it that way. Christopher Hitchens is wrong to say that McCain’s late turn into a merchant of anything-goes innuendo is the result of creeping “senility.” It’s classical political resentment: in his mind, he’s still losing to George W. Bush, just as Nixon thought he was losing to John F. Kennedy—in 1972.

I’ve defended McCain where I thought he’d been unjustly or hysterically maligned, but there’s no arguing the point that his choice of a running mate has effectively squandered the public trust. What a blunder, and what a wasted opportunity. Does anyone now think the Republican “base,” whose tendency to froth and foam has led to absurd but familiar analogies to fascism, would have voted Democratic this year had it been deprived of a cultural reactionary with a socialite’s wardrobe? Rush Limbaugh would have declared for the man he calls the “Magic Negro”?  Really?  The bloc McCain needed to persuade was that of independents—his natural constituency—who would have found the combination of experience and integrity too alluring to pass up. We needed an Eisenhower with a steady hand, not a Preston Sturges of “right-wing screwball,” as Leon Wieseltier unimprovably phrased it.

Here’s another Greek misfortune of his own making: McCain’s age and questionable health would have been overshadowed by his apparent energy on the stump had his VP been less of a Halloween costume and more of an insurance policy. Instead, these concerns became the stuff of actuarial office bets, and a disturbing aura of death and decrepitude has surrounded him during his final laps around the country.

As for Barack Obama, I'm worried his supporters are too  ecstatic, and not chastened for the challenges he's about to face, which some of them, judging by conversations I've had, can't imagine to be worse than Hillary Clinton. I find his personality winning, and his intellect impressive. For good reason did Weber define charisma as one criterion of authority. I’ve recoiled in horror at the paranoid and sinister accusations leveled against Obama from the fever-swamps of blogland. Isn't it amazing how this charming young man manages to divide his time between battleground states and a cave in Waziristan?

When I hear the word “socialism,” I remember the lonely, prophetic radicals who screamed bloody murder about the Soviet Union before liberals and conservatives stopped referring warmly to Uncle Joe. Until and unless the DNC espouses the belief in the government ownership of the means of production, then the rejoinder belongs to the author of Das Kapital himself, who famously demeaned the non-revolutionary varieties of redistributionism by saying, “If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist.”

Actually, some of the most astute observers of this election have been Marxists, or recovering New Leftists. Sol Stern, former editor of Ramparts, has rightly assailed William Ayers as a greater immediate danger to the American education system than he ever was to the Pentagon. Paul Berman, echoing his hero Irving Howe, has reminded us that 60’s left-wing authoritarianism is no alternative to the timeless right-wing brand, and that an unrepentant mad bomber does not need or deserve a burnished reputation or friendship society. In these very pages, Phyllis Chesler has shown how Sarah Palin has brought out the worst in modern feminism, causing cracks in the glass ceiling, and crack-ups in the movement.

Tellingly, however, none of these critics has rushed to denounce Obama as the second coming of Abbie Hoffman or Franz Fanon. Why is that, do you suppose, if he’s as recondite and unreconstructed as some of my inbox material maintains?  I find the graying 68ers more reliable in their judgments of sign-posted ideology than the collective wisdom of the National Review editorial board. In fact, one prominent black detractor, Professor Adolph Reed, has made the most salient case against Obama in the Progressive, arguing that the candidate isn’t anything as glamorous as a secret radical, but rather a standard-issue opportunist who talks out of both sides of his mouth and is always looking to a cut a deal to advance his career. What more could we want from a graduate of the Daley machine of Chicago, that noble city? The Saul to consult to understand Obama’s baptism in picaresque urban realities isn’t Alinsky. It’s Bellow.

Where I have covered Obama’s policy prescriptions – namely for Iraq – I’ve found him improvisational and half-cocked. He doesn’t confuse Sunni and Shia, but as late as May 2008 he thought Iraqis would bow to the constitutional re-drafting authority of the United Nations, the body responsible for a decade of immiserating sanctions, and which has not had a presence in their country since Al Qaeda blew up its headquarters in Baghdad in 2003. He also labored under a misapprehension that Iraq’s parliament had not, as of last spring, passed laws for de-Baathification, political amnesty, and provisional elections when in fact it had passed them, and he had made the non-fulfillment of these and other “benchmarks” established by the Bush administration a major talking point of his antiwar rhetoric.

Nevertheless, Obama shows no sign of letting up on Al Qaeda where it still presents a lethal menace to civilization, and it’s unlikely—given the price he’s had to pay for even suggesting it—that he would now meet with the mullahs of Iran without preconditions. Verbal Vesuvius though his own running mate may be, Joe Biden has seen Russia by standing on its soil, not through magic binoculars; he has a proven record of doing something about genocide; and he has kept abreast of the headlines in Iraq enough to recommend a three-state solution that, however misguided in my view, has been endorsed by Peter Galbraith, a scholar and diplomat who ranks as one of the most serious American experts on Iraqi Kurdistan. Given Obama’s likely appointment of Richard Holbrooke, advocate of Kosovo independence, to a high-level position in his cabinet, there is every expectation that muscular interventionism will indeed have a fighting chance in the next four years. My friend Eli Lake, a prominent neoconservative, has written cogently that Obama’s foreign policy, judging by the people crafting it, would more resemble Ronald Reagan’s than it would Jimmy Carter’s. That means escalating dirty wars and black ops, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, we will.

Perhaps most important, given the way Americans are said to vote, Obama has demonstrated an equanimity during the financial calamity that, while not a sufficient condition for keeping the country out of a depression, is surely a necessary one.

Nothing would have pleased me more than to have been able to say that of his rival, under different circumstances.

Jewcy recently asked a select group of foreign writers we admire to state which candidate they'd vote for if they could, and why. Alan Johnson is the editor of the online literary journal Democratiya.

I’d be politically homeless in the US. As a social democrat I am for spreading the wealth around. I believe in the free way of life and the republican form of government as the basis of individual and civic greatness and I think both require a much greater measure of equality among citizens than we see in the US today. But there is more than this at stake in the election. In 2007 the Democrats launched a sustained surge-against-the-surge. The inconvenient truth is that if the Democrats had been in charge the West would have sustained a strategic defeat in Iraq. As would the Iraqi people. Barack Obama talks admiringly of Reinhold Niebuhr. That’s good. But he drifted with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the netroots. That’s worrying. Obama's Iraq policy looks reasonable for 2009, but only because others, John McCain to the fore, ignored it in 2007 and 2008 and turned Iraq around. And with his probable defeat days away, I want to put this on record: John McCain did not look ‘borderline senile’ to me as he travelled back and forward to Iraq, walking the streets of Baghdad in a flak jacket with General Petraeus, and making the case back in the US for what the Democrats used to call 'The McCain Surge' (when they thought it would fail). To me, he looked heroic.

Perhaps it was a circus act for the gullible and schmaltz-inclined, but the Sen. John McCain of 2000 combined the best characteristics of Superman (a hero who defended Truth, Justice and the American Way), Batman (a zillionaire with a dark past who fought corruption wherever it lurked), and Wolverine (a stocky, grizzled, hard-drinking veteran with berserker rage, but still awesome).

In 2008, however, McCain combines the worst characteristics of Lex Luthor (hollow lust for power, evil henchmen, bald), the Joker (impulsive, belligerent, plays people against one another, unserious) and the X-Men villain Apocalypse (he will bring about the apocalypse).

McCain once made you proud to call yourself an American, and it wasn’t demagogic pride (“with us or against us,” “love it or leave it,” “for the troops or against the troops”) but the real thing. He inspired millions of people with his story of sacrifice and service, and defined himself by his honesty and "maverick" yet moderate positions on the issues. His candidacy derailed when George W. Bush’s goons infamously spread whispers of a brown lovechild whom McCain had actually adopted. As this hideous decade progressed—from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib to Hurricane Katrina to the merciless evisceration of the U.S. Constitution—many of us said to ourselves, “If only McCain were in charge…”

Since 2000, however, McCain has devolved like a post-Atomic Holocaust science-fiction zombie into a grotesque McCarthyite (McCainthyite?) parody. Whereas he once played to centrist Americans—the silent majority who cannot stand “agents of intolerance” whether their names are Farrakhan or Falwell—presently he panders to the most regressive elements of our culture and the most vile aspects of our human nature.

McCain took a bloody shit all over his legacy, and chose to empower the darkest corners of the American Right over the American mainstream. He put all his eggs into the Rabid Mutant Basket, assuming the overzealous radicals would show on Election Day instead of the lazy normal people. If you prefer the Enlightenment over the Dark Ages—Truth over Lies, Hope over Fear, Unity over Hate—the John McCain of 2008 wants you to go fuck yourself.

It hurts me to type this—genuinely hurts—because I once worshipped at the McAltar. (As I make clear in my new book Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, the Rabid Right and Other American Idiots I'm a bit of a maverick myself; in the words of Chris Rock, "Crime? I'm conservative. Prostitution? I'm liberal!") Goddamnit, John McCain, why did you break my heart worse than any woman I’ve ever loved? Why did you fellate George W. Bush more furiously in the past eight years than the First Lady since their wedding day?

Back in April McCain “pledged to conduct a respectful campaign,” promising to focus on the issues instead of questioning the loyalty and character of his opponent as the GOP questioned Sen. John Kerry’s in 2004. McCain took the high road, which Americans shockingly appreciate this year, and then he realized he would lose the election to Sen. Barack Obama, so McCain panicked and made a deviant blood pact with the Lord of the Underworld:

“LUCIFER, HEAR MY PLEA!” McCain bellowed to the Fallen Angel, naked and shivering and covered in his own geriatric spermatozoa. “I NEED A MIRACLE… I NEED A GODSEND… I NEED A YOU-SEND!”

“YES, MCCAIN, I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU,” said the Dark Prince. “MY DEMONIC BRIDE, ALASKA GOV. SARAH PALIN, WHO IS YOURS FOR A SMALL PRICE: YOUR SOUL, MCCAIN, YOUR ETERNAL SOOOOUUUUL…”

And lo, the wretched bargain was sealed, but McCain forgot that deals with the devil tend to backfire, especially when you are covered in Septuagenarian Man Juice.

Palin looked perfect on paper: a young, popular female governor who would appeal to religious conservatives, gun owners, small town residents, soccer/hockey moms, bitter Hillary Clinton supporters (are there any other kind?) and guys who like to jerk off (there are not any other kind). Nobody in D.C. expected McCain to nominate her—nobody had heard of her, other than Alaskans like me—and she caused immediate waves of excitement throughout the country. Pundits declared her selection a political masterstroke. America fell in love with her overnight… and then for some reason she opened her mouth.

Palin could not identify a Supreme Court decision besides Roe v. Wade. She could not name a newspaper or magazine she reads. She recently traveled abroad for the first time. She believes the First Amendment protects politicians from criticism, as opposed to protecting critics from politicians. With a corruption investigation underway, and accusations of censorship, cronyism, religious extremism, and the tendency to fire any public official who disagreed with her, the truth swiftly became apparent: she was Bush with a bush. (Update: I thought this was mildly clever, but "Bush with a bush" gets 1,680 hits on Google. Also, she might wax.)

Her initial approval numbers plunged; she became a liability to McCain and an embarrassment to everyone but the most extreme right-wing diehards who embraced her wholeheartedly as a symbol of their myriad resentments against modernity, the scientific process, proper usage of the English language, etc.

You felt bad for her—she seemed like a normal person who had been picked off the street and expected to master geopolitics overnight—and perhaps you felt guilty for judging her. You might have searched your soul and wondered if you’re a know-it-all snob who looks down on regular folks from your cosmopolitan pedestal. Hey, if you were given a pop quiz on national TV, you would probably fail too; personally I’d rather not reveal my batting average for Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

However, you are not trying to convince hundreds of millions of Americans you are qualified for the second highest office in the land, and Palin is far too malicious to deserve our pity. Just as Bush is a divider, not a “uniter,” Palin exploited the time-tested strategies of the GOP playbook; she made this election about City Moose vs. Country Moose. If you question the Republican Party, you are an “elitist,” but if you never question the Republican Party—even when it shreds the Bill of Rights and amalgamates Church and State—you are “pro-America.”

Palin is the darkness in Plato’s cave, which is a reference she would probably need explained to her. She would have fed the hemlock to Socrates. She would have imprisoned Galileo. She would have prosecuted Scopes. If she were born in Hanoi, she would have mocked the critics of torture who “worried that someone won’t read them their rights,” as she did at the Republican National Convention, only “them” would have a slightly different meaning.

Americans have a tendency to vote for candidates who seem “just like me,” or remind us of our beer-drinking buddies, which explains the (initial) popularity of Bush and Palin. Our electoral narcissism is understandable but ludicrous; the vast majority of us are obviously not qualified for the White House. It is not “elitism” to observe this; it is reality. I have plenty of beer-drinking buddies, none of whom would receive my vote for anything, not even designated driver.

“Someone called me a redneck woman once and you know what I said back?” Palin recently asked a crowd of supporters. “‘Why, thank you.’”

Is this how a potential president of the United States should speak? Like a Hooters Waitress-in-Chief?

Conservatives used to believe in meritocracy; they opposed racial and gender quotas in the workplace on the principle that the most qualified person should get the job, no matter his or her physical characteristics. Modern right-wingers, however, loathe expertise of any kind. Their only concern is propagating their Orgy of Hate: for scientists, for teachers, for journalists, for immigrants, for the poor, for sexuality, for civilization itself.

It’s a vicious circle: the more McCain alienates centrist voters, the more feverishly he must court the extremists, in turn alienating more centrist voters, requiring him to further court the weirdos. McCain and Palin have consequently unleashed a vicious mob mentality which might not expire on November 5^th. When McCain finally tried to calm one of his psychotic xenophobic crowds, the testosterone-filled degenerates booed him for saying Obama is a “decent person…”

According to Palin, Obama “sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists,” “is hiding his real agenda,” “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist,” and is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” When not insinuating Obama is the Antichrist, the McCain-Palin campaign accuses Obama of supporting sexual education for kindergarteners—as if he were some kind of pervert—even though Obama actually proposed teaching children how to identify and avoid pedophiles. When the hard-hitting journalists at The View asked McCain to disown the ad, the Arizona senator refused. (Perhaps McCan is vying for the North American Man-Boy Love Association demographic? Are they swing voters? They hang around swing sets…)

While Obama has condemned and distanced himself from the left-wing extremists in his party and in his past, McCain spoke at Jerry Falwell’s university and proudly accepted the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee, who declared Hurricane Katrina God’s punishment on New Orleans for its sinful ways. (McCain ultimately rejected the endorsement when it emerged that Hagee claimed Hitler fulfilled God’s plan. Too late, McSellout.)

As the lunatics take over the GOP asylum, conservative intellectuals are fleeing: former Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Review royalty Christopher Buckley, Washington Post columnist George Will, Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan, former Bush spokesman Scott McClellan and former Bush speechwriter David Frum… the guy who came up with the nuanced, levelheaded phrase “axis of evil.”

In the politically correct ‘90s conservatives had some legitimate gripes: overzealous speech codes, frivolous lawsuits, Orwellian sensitivity training, punitive vice taxes and other government overreach. Left-wingers were often the angry and scary ones—moderates sympathized with Republicans—but this is no longer the case. The pendulum has swung too far to the right; it must come back to the center. The Republican Party of 2008 loathes freedom of speech, pursuit of happiness, separation of church and state, equality under the law and liberty for all. Wrap yourself in the flag all you want, but voting for the modern GOP is as unpatriotic as it gets.

For the last decade Republicans have equated dissent with treachery, sophistication with subversion and prudence with surrender. They worship the symbols of patriotism—the flag and the anthem and the pledge, as if no other countries have these things—but not the meaning of America. For people who supposedly stand firm against terrorists, Republicans are pathologically terrified; they hunt for communists under the bed as if the 1950s never passed, as if Canadian- and European-style social services are indistinguishable from Stalinism. As a Cheap Penny-Pinching Jew I’m all for balanced budgets and cautious spending, but if “socialist!!!!!!!” market regulations and safety nets are so fiscally dangerous, why are the Canadian and European currencies worth more than ours? (A hamburger in Ireland cost me the equivalent of $20 this summer! And it sucked! The Irish can't cook anything! No wonder a million of them starved!)

The world is an insanely complex place, but True Believers on the Right cannot process concepts deeper than Patriotism vs. Treason, God-Loving vs. God-Hating, Capitalist vs. Communist, Good vs. Evil, Us vs. Them. At the final presidential debate McCain referred to the “pro-abortion” stance, as if the majority of our citizenry supports infanticide for supporting Roe v. Wade. This is ridiculous; most of us only support terminating babies when we’re stuck inside a movie theater with one. (McCain opposed overturning Roe in 1999. Was he for abortion before he was against it?)

Facing economic collapse thanks to our voracious greed—have you seen your credit card statement recently?—Americans have rejected the fantasy-based Culture War and finally asked for realistic solutions. Who cares if gay-married transsexuals are unfreezing embryonic stem cells and committing doctor-assisted suicide if nobody can afford bread and we’re cannibalizing one another for protein?

McCain deserved to win the Republican nomination (and perhaps the presidency) in 2000, but it’s no longer 2000. Yes, he is an American hero, but—much like the TV show Heroes—he has become over the top, inconsistent, badly scripted and embarrassing to watch. His Cold War understanding of the world is obsolete; his legendary temper is the last thing America needs right now. After 9/11 Americans got angry—naturally, justifiably—but our blind vengeance and misplaced trust in leaders such as McCain (who promised a swift, painless victory in Iraq), led to colossal mistakes which have jeopardized our status as an economic, military and moral superpower.

I used to believe it didn’t matter what “foreigners” thought of us—our president doesn’t need a permission slip to defend the American people, blah blah blah—but since then I’ve traveled to Europe and Latin America and the Middle East, and I learned something which surprised me: many people in other countries want the U.S. to lead, want us to be Number One, want us to shine as a beacon of justice as we once did. The rest of the human race is begging us to elect Obama not because he will weaken our military or lessen our influence, which is impossible after eight years of Bush (unless we elect McCain); they want us to return to our founding values of freedom and equality. They resent us for betraying our ideals, not because of our ideals.

As our economic institutions crumble, we cannot survive as a nation divided by all-consuming hatred of our elected leaders and fellow citizens, but Hate is the only thing the Republican Party has to offer: unthinking populist ferocity which makes no distinction between civil discourse and civil war; the same blind, menacing frenzy which besieged Italy, Germany, Russia and China in the previous century. We are on the brink of irrelevance as a nation, but miraculously we have one final chance to avoid sinking into oblivion. We have one final chance to not act like a bunch of complete douche bags.

If you vote against Barack Obama, you are on the wrong side of history, just as Nero was on the wrong side of history when the Roman Empire crumbled. Obama has shown far more prescience and judiciousness than his opponent. He is one of the few Americans who did not lose his mind after 9/11. He is a constitutional scholar with the brains to lead us out of this dark, sick, horrible decade of Propaganda and Death and Facial Stubble.

Yes, Obama has inspired a cult of personality, but sometimes such things are deserved; millions of teenyboppers loved the Beatles, forever the greatest band of all time. Obama possesses a top-tier intellect and Herculean self-control, which are qualifications, not disadvantages. And even if he does become the worldwide Islamo-Antichrist who gnaws upon the skulls of the Enslaved White Masses for breakfast, it wouldn’t be that much worse than Bush, right?

No man is perfect, no politician is pure of heart, but in 2008 we are not choosing between the lesser of two evils. The tragedy is that, if John McCain had stayed true to his character—assuming his former self was not a character—we could have chosen between the greater of two goods.

Losing a Facebook friend or loved one is always painful. You notice that your number has dropped by one, but because you’re friends with so many people you don’t know, or met once at a party, or haven’t spoken with since elementary school, or never spoke with in elementary school, anyway, it’s difficult to identify your defector. The truth will out, eventually, thanks to that People You May Know thing, as long as the person in question hasn’t wised up and gotten off Facebook altogether.

When I saw that it was you, I was shocked. We don’t correspond, and have only hung out once or twice, with our mutual acquaintance. I may be mistaken—asking you directly would be far too “awks”—but I suspect it’s political. I haven’t set my middle name to “Hussein” or posted YouTube videos of Sarah Palin look-alikes being sexually assaulted by moose. Most imprudently, I’ve included in my profile a link to my website, a roiling, mephitic cesspit of hate speech and, uh, food blogging.

If I’m mistaken, I apologize—but I don’t think I am, and what I have to say holds true in any event.

We were promised that Barack Obama would lead us out of the prehistoric wilderness of “partisan politics.” What I’ve seen instead, largely from Obama supporters, is a great deal of disrespect for the opposing camp. That on its own doesn’t bother me. I happen to believe that “partisan politics,” presumably whiner’s code for “partisan rancor,” are what a two-party system demands. No, what I find galling, and disappointing, is the incuriosity of the typical Obama voter.

“Incurious” is a word that has stuck to Sarah Palin like a Homeric epithet, partly because she didn’t have a passport until recently. (Here’s a paradox: The college students sneering at this revelation, the ones with colorful passport stamps from their Wanderjahrs in Bangladesh and Kenya, are the ones shouting loudest that America is in the toilet. Didn’t they learn anything? Perhaps travel’s overrated.) Of course, being curious about “the outside world”—say, having one’s picture taken next to someone in charming local costume—does not mean one is curious about individuals.

When someone like you figures out that I’m voting for John McCain, he instantly knows everything about me. He knows that I yearn for endless war, smog-choked skies, keeping condoms out of Africa, keeping condoms out of America, drowning the poor, raising poultry Bonsai Kitten-style, forcing gays to wear identifying pieces of flair, and abolishing abortion so that unwanted children can be raised in secret CIA janissaries. All this without asking a single question!

Those rare Obama-voting friends who take the time to interrogate me—in a friendly way, I mean, not tied to a chair beneath a hot lamp—find out a few unexpected things:

I voted for Obama in the California primary because I believed at the time that he would make a better president than Hillary Clinton. I don’t uncritically admire McCain, but I’m unmoved by entreaties to vote for a candidate with whom I disagree on so much just because he’s more charismatic and runs a superior campaign. I find Sarah Palin remarkable, appealing, and unqualified. You can’t have it all.

I am not a registered Republican. My vote has nothing to do with party ties. I would have loved that rarest thing, a serious third-party candidate.

I value the environment and clean energy, which is why McCain’s support for nuclear power is so important to me.

I’m not against the poor. I am the poor. I owed no income tax last year, and under Obama’s economic plan would receive a check, funny money he has rather cunningly termed a “tax cut.” This would be no different than Bush’s Economic Stimulus Package, which was also putting a Band-Aid on a brain hemorrhage. Has everyone forgotten that Michelle Obama herself ridiculed that plan thusly: “You’re getting $600—what can you do with that? . . . The short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good, and it may even feel good that first month when you get that check, and then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings.” Truer words, etc. I am the poor, and I say keep your charity.

In California I voted against animal confinement and factory farms. It’s a small thing, but it may earn me some sympathy from those readers who have hitherto assumed I shoot puppies for sport.  

Last but not least, because it’s especially relevant to you, I voted to keep gay marriage legal in California. The people who oppose it get married in churches, anyway; they have no business complaining until the government attempts to legislate their religious beliefs as well. As for that “message” gay marriage allegedly sends to children: There’s no law stopping parents from criticizing what they find distasteful in society. In fact, it’s their job.

See? I’m not some party automaton. I don’t hate Obama supporters, though I dislike their religious intensity. I don’t hate Obama, either; I just think he’s a standard-issue Democratic politician, full of good intentions and bad ideas. Why are so few of my friends willing to discuss this with me? Why are Obama’s supporters content to assume that McCain’s are either evil, stupid, or mentally ill? It puts me in mind of what the title character of Kingsley Amis’s Jake’s Thing said about women:

They don’t mean what they say, they don’t use language for discourse but for extending their personality, they take all disagreement as opposition, yes they do, even the brightest of them, and that’s the end of the search for truth which is what the whole thing’s supposed to be about.

Perhaps not true of women as a group, but forgive me if I say it applies nicely to more than a few of my Facebook friends. I wish you weren’t one of them—but, then again, I guess you aren’t.

• Obama should be able to disclose his small donors list.

• EU urges Israel to curb settlers violence. 

• JTA looks at Obama and McCain advisers. 

• Zack and Miri Make a (yawning) Porno. 

• Obama kicks unfriendly reporters off campaign plane. 

Jewcy recently asked a select group of foreign writers we admire to state which candidate they'd vote for if they could, and why. David Toube blogs at Harry's Place.

The prospect of Obama in the White House is hugely preferable to an unwell man whose vice president is a Creationist. I am attracted by Obama's determination to extend the prosecution of the fight against jihadism beyond the frontiers of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jewcy recently asked a select group of foreign writers we admire to state which candidate they'd vote for if they could, and why. Nick Cohen's response is the first in a series we will be running from now until Election Day.

Obama for four reasons:

1. Although McCain is an impressive man, he has not had an impressive campaign, and looks too old for the job to me.

2. He's been a maverick on many issues -- except the economy. What with one thing and another, new Republican thinking about economics is needed right now, and his failure to meet the challenge of the Crash by shaking himself out of conservative orthodoxy counts against him.

3. I know this is a despicable argument, I realise you must judge men by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin, but a black president is still one hell of a milestone to put behind you. The post-racial society an Obama presidency would inevitably bring, whether he wants it or not, is worth having. Wouldn't it be good if our children didn't have to go through all the speech codes, colour quotas and politics
of competitive grievance which have so numbed the minds and twisted the tongues of our generation?

4. Around the world, liberal opinion has desecended into anti-Americanism and fellow-travelling with totalitarianism. Liberals will find it harder to carry on with their old debased ways if Obama takes charge. Many will, of course, but some will recover their wits and return to honourable politics.

This is not an endorsement. I am a journalist, and I reserve the right to denounce Obama as a scoundrel from the moment he takes office.

One of the most attractive things about the right in recent years has been its indignation toward frivolous moral equivalency. While many on the left were noting that "our terrorism" was as bad--if not worse--than "theirs," conservatives had sense to note that the violence perpetrated by racists and sexists and designed to maximize civilian casualties was not the same as violence designed to minimize of civilian casualties by one of the more successfully liberal and multicultural states in the world. There was something as well to be said for the difference between the end goals: the flourishing of liberal democracy (no matter how "problematized" it had become) or the establishment of Islamist rule. There was always a valid argument to be had about ends and means and "collateral damage" but whatever one wanted to say, those who said it was all the same were rightly discounted from discussion on the grounds that their faculties of judgment were severely impaired.

Sadly, upon surveying the arguments over the rising tide of hate infecting both sides of the 2008 presidential race, it would seem that many of those same discerning voices have joined forces with the party of equivalency. They seem to have forgotten that all-important lesson once taught so well when the subject matter was Islamism, that all hate isn't the same, and that all hate isn't bad hate. After all, those who said hating terrorists was wrong always came off as the kinds of people who didn't understand double negatives in speech; hating bad things is logically a good thing.

Off the top, however, it's notable that some on the left still haven't failed to make the standard Nazi comparison in reference to their Republican foes. The predictable answer here might be to group these people in with those shouting lynch mob obscenities at McCain rallies and then chalk it all up to the "fringe" of either party, thus vindicating the mainstream of each. McCain told the 'Obama's an Arab' lady to sit down and Obama scolded MoveOn.org, so aren't they each in the clear, even if they'll each rack up a great deal of votes from their respective fringes? This is one case where even-handedness is not the answer it might seem to be. In fact, the hate directed at the McCain-Palin campaign from the left is mainstream, not confined to the lunatic fringe, and yet very justifiable. Healthy, even.

The reason, sorry to say, has to do with race. True, presidential campaigning is hard. Everybody plays rough, and everybody toys with the truth, plays with words and associative logic to attack one's opponent. But there is a reason the Ayers issue put the McCain campaign over the edge--a reason that the rallies got uglier when the former Weatherman came up and a reason the anti-Palin crowds became filled with righteous hate. Ayers was designed to change focus from cool-headed vs. hot-headed to whether Obama is who you think he is. The way this was framed? He hangs out with terrorists. "Terrorist" being the singlemost iconic, psychologically freighted word of our era used to evoke our worst of enemies.

By now we've heard the arguments trotted out over what Obama's relationship to Ayers meant. But what was never examined thoroughly enough was, why did the McCain campaign think they could get this label to stick? Whether they knew it or not, they thought it had legs because Obama is not white. The glue that would saddle Obama with the slur of "terrorist" was his skin color. It could even be argued that historical specifics and the real acts of Ayers were secondary to the McCain campaign's prime objective: just as the name Osama registers in the mind with "Terrorist," get the name Obama to do the same. It should be no wonder that early GOP robocalls worried little with Obama's tax or health care plan. They only sought to repeat the two words together and hope that, for enough voters, they'd cling to one another.

Talking about white privilege in America can turn off even the most unprejudiced of people. Plenty of whites are understandably tired of hearing about their "crimes" and the crimes of their forefathers when they themselves haven't ever had a mean or unsavory thought about a person of any color. But to paraphrase the work of H.E. Baber, white privilege, if it means anything today, has to do with the fact that being white is transparent. It is not socially salient. In other words, if you are white--especially if you are a white male--the culture at large will more likely see you as you want to be seen. You are permitted to invent yourself without your race or gender complicating the picture. You can make mistakes without being blamed for the disposition of all white people. You can make choices without feeling chained to a script of your ethnic identity.

Being non-white on the other hand, is socially salient. Your identity is already bound up in being an outsider, in a notion of how you should be or act because of your ethnicity. Self-invention is far more difficult, because your skin color renders expectations and associations, the deviation from which usually carry a heavy price. Because Barack Obama is not a white person, his ability to invent himself beyond the foreignness of his name, beyond the color of his skin, is no different--no easier--than it has been for so many non-white Americans who have attempted the same kind of self-invention on a less presidential scale. But why is this?

Why in the 21st century is being an outsider still a hurdle for non-white Americans? Isn't the narrative of the underdog, the immigrant and the outsider one of America's most cherished? And why, in a presidential campaign like this, is otherness available to the McCain campaign to use as the glue that will stick Obama with the label "Terrorist" in a way that similar tactics could never work with a white man? While electoral demographics, Atwater campaigning, and the technique of Willie Horton-ing your opponent all mater, these factors don't account for as much as some would like. Campaigns may use the weapon, but it's handed to them by liberals. These days, it's called multiculturalism.

It has not been the right that has insisted on the social salience of race in the last 2 or 3 decades, it has decidedly been the left. Emerging from the New Left, the doctrine of multiculturalism, well-intentioned as it might have been, effectively established a regime of political philosophy that chided anyone for wanting to have anything to do with the West. As they saw it, differing ethnicities and cultures were the spice of the life, and their unique ways of seeing were alternatives to the patriarchal imperialism of the West. Nobody who wanted a taste of that liberal dream of identity transparency and self-invention could be anything but duped by the Man. The big, white, imperialist Man.

And so the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement were replaced with a new kind of tyranny--the hard-line directive to always be black, Asian, Muslim--anything so long as it wasn't white. Be proud, don't be ashamed of your culture. In fact, you had better love it or risk being an Uncle Tom in-cahoots with the oppressors. Rather than helping render ethnicity and race more transparent and meaningless, thus allowing people to create their identity and future free of the dictates of genetics, these folks pushed it up front. Now, they'd like to pretend the issues bubbling up in the presidential race are just leftover bigotry from the South, or just some core aspect of being on the right. In reality, this is what the politics of multiculturalism have sown.

Beating McCain should have been easier than it has been for Barack Obama. But Obama has always had a higher hurdle to jump, an otherness to eliminate. As the left seethes with hate toward the campaign that has sought to keep that hurdle high and exploit Obama's outsider quality, this hate can be seen as nothing less than a good hate--the hate of something bad. It is a credit to Joe Six Pack Dems everywhere who don't give a flip about the theory of white privilege and the social salience of ethnicity that they perceive the fulcrum on which McCain hoped (and still seems to hope, by the way) to saddle Obama with the label of "Terrorist." No stock response of "well the left does it too, just see the recent episode of the Family Guy" will do. Not only has the Obama campaign never tried to make a disparaging label stick to McCain using an immutable genetic trait--even if they had wanted to, they never could have. Again, the immutable genetic trait of being white has no glue because it doesn't connote being foreign or an outsider.

To hell with every leftist and Obama supporter that wants to wrangle up Nazi imagery like the lazy analogy it always ends up being. But enough too with pretending like the left wing haters are just the analogue of the off-with-his-treasonous-head fringe at McCain rallies. John McCain and Sarah Palin--or their campaign managers, whomever you prefer to blame--opted to make a central campaign strategy out of capitalizing on the notion of Barack Obama, The Outsider. This trait was made available to them by the left which has obsessed itself with the politics of outsiderism--with writing the scripts of the noble (read: non white) outsider. But when those on the left send the message of rebuke as loudly, angrily, and, yes, hatefully as they have of late, they are doing a good thing.

Multiculturalism, as an ideology that prioritizes ethnicity, culture and identity as a basis for politics, proves at every turn to be a cancer in the body politic--especially for most worthwhile liberal aspirations. But the McCain campaign saw the tumor and decided to pump it full of carcinogens. It's been suggested that this election would be a referendum on Barack Obama. What it looks like more and more is a referendum on what it means to live in a multicultural society. No matter the shortcomings of the Illinois senator, the surge in support for him speaks highly of the American people and where they stand on the matter: against the party that seeks to continue emphasizing difference and separation and in favor of the one trying to explode those ways of seeing and thinking for good.

Here's to hoping that the polls indicating a decisive Obama victory on Nov. 4th reflect the necessary hate for a campaign that elevated poisonous exclusionary thinking to a virtue. But here's to hoping that such a victory, should it come to pass, will also be the final nail in the coffin of multiculturalism as it's been understood until now.

The NBC poll showing that 55% of Americans do not believe that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president is notable to me for one reason: 40% of Americans DO think she's qualified. That's a lot of people! Like if America were a baseball team then you could say that the outfielders, the pitcher and the catcher don't think she's qualified but the entire infield does.

And what does it mean to "Love America"? Or more to the point what are "Un-American views"? Is it un-American to be self-critical? If so, then we should still have slavery and women shouldn't be allowed to vote. Or by that logic then I guess it's un-American to oppose Roe v. Wade? It's in the Constitution after all. Still, the implications that Barack Obama holds un-American views persist. What's the idea there? That he's going to become president so that he can bomb... himself?

If you've been watching her interviews you'll notice that Sarah Palin's favorite word is "Ahmadinejad". She just loves saying that word. And I mean let's face it: it is a very hard word to pronounce. It reminds me of a story about James Ellroy's LA Confidential. It involves the word "valediction". The gist of the story is that using big words like "valediction" (or "Ahmadinejad") can sometimes con an audience into thinking things make sense when in fact they don't. "Boy, that's a long word, she must know what she's talking about."

With the latest revelation that Sarah Palin has spent more than four times what Joe the Plumber makes in a year, $175,000 to be exact, on her wardrobe so far, I couldn't help but thinking of another book: The Bonfire Of The Vanities. I also thought of the movie, or to be more exact, the making of the movie. The making of the movie version of Bonfire of the Vanities as detailed in the book The Devil's Candy by Julie Salamon is the story of a pretty good idea that became a really, really bad idea really fast. I think that the publisher's comments sum it up well: "When Brian De Palma agreed to allow Julie Salamon unlimited access to the film production of Tom Wolfe's best-selling The Bonfire of the Vanities, both director and journalist must have felt like they were on to something big. How could it lose? But instead Salamon got a front-row seat at the Hollywood disaster of the decade...This riveting insider's portrait provides a timeless account of an industry where art, talent, ego, and money combine and clash on a monumental scale."

If only John McCain's presidential bid were just a movie. Then again who thought really thought that the movie about the chihuahua would do so well?

Al-Qaeda is funny. Well, not usually, but the jihadist group's announcement on Wednesday morning that it is endorsing John McCain in the 2008 United States presidential election is undeniably comical. A posting on al-Hesbah, an extremist web site that has been tied to al-Qaeda, declared: "Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," because he is likely to continue the "failing march of his predecessor."

Wavering between complete obliviousness and self-awareness in its most absolute form, al-Qaeda is in a position that must be making a bunch of people pretty uncomfortable. No American politician wants to be linked to the organization responsible for September 11, and there is no doubt that the terrorist group knows that. With al-Qeada's announcement comes a barrage of attempts at rationalization:

Is al-Qaeda endorsing McCain because they actually want him to win, or are they using reverse psychology in hopes of disparaging McCain and driving voters into Barack Obama's court? If that is the case, what would they have to gain from an Obama presidency? Or what if al-Qaeda is actually not aware of the horrible connotations that come with any mention of their name and believe themselves to be making a serious endorsement? What's going on with these guys, anyway; does a, al-Qaeda central governing body even exist anymore?

The al-Hesbah post continues with what has become standard-issue anti-America terrorist punditry, claiming that the group is considering launching an attack on America at some point in the weeks leading up to the election, believing:

"It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda," said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. "Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America."

The whole situation is great; it's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer attempts to be nice to Ned Flanders but ends up destroying his life. Killing through kindness...classic.

[Note: This post is part of an ongoing dialogue between Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic and Shmuel Rosner of Slate on the need for U.S. national candidates to stop invoking the Jewish state every chance they get. Rosner's first letter can be read here; Goldberg's reply to it, here. Rosner's second letter is here.]

Dear Shmuel,

Happy End-of-the-Holidays. I don't know what I'm looking forward to less -- two more weeks of this campaign, or taking down my sukkah. I have to get a better sukkah next year.

Before I get to McCain, let me acknowledge your perspicacity, as Bill O'Reilly would say: One of the things that's been missing from the debate over which candidate is better for Israel is the question, Which candidate will make America stronger? Because a strong America is a necessity for Israel. I think that the Israeli officials you speak with who suggest that Obama might actually strengthen America's standing in the world are on to something.

Your analysis of McCain's weaknesses, from an Israeli perspective, is spot-on, as well. It's abundantly clear that Israelis of all political denominations become quite frightened when their neo-conservative cousins (not that you have to be Jewish to be a neo-conservative, by the way) talk about exporting democracy to the Muslim world. If you don't mind me quoting myself, I'll repeat a story I told in the Atlantic earlier this year. In December of 2006, Natan Sharansky received the Medal of Freedom from President Bush, and the Israeli embassy held a celebration afterward. As Sharansky extolled the virtues of democracy to the assembled crowd, a senior Israeli security official whispered to me, "What a child." He explained: "It's not smart … He wants Jordan to be more democratic. Do you know what that would mean for Israel and America? If you were me, would you rather have a stable monarch who is secular and who has a good intelligence service on your eastern border, or would you rather have a state run by Hamas? That's what he would get if there were no more monarchy in Jordan." Afterward, I spoke with Sharansky, and in his charmingly self-deprecating way, he told me the following: "After I came back from Washington once," he said, "I saw [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon in the Knesset, and he said, 'Mazel tov, Natan. You've convinced President Bush of something that doesn't exist.'"

This is a long way of saying that Israelis, in the main, will be relieved when America stops talking about Arab democracy. That said, I don't think John McCain is quite the neoconservative democracy warrior his enemies make him out to be. He is a more practical man, I think, than George W. Bush. But so, for that matter, is Barack Obama. I've looked for signs of incipient Carterism -- defined here as an overarching belief in the power of the talking cure when it comes to evil dictators -- in Obama's actions and statements and so far, I haven't found them. Which is not to say that might not overvalue negotiations when it comes to Iran; we just don't know. I could go on about McCain's views of the Middle East -- where's he strong and where he's not (I do think that, unlike Obama -- thank you, Joe Biden -- America's enemies might not be so eager to test McCain, in part because they might be under the impression that he's crazy) but, today at least, the McCain campaign has a posthumous feel to it, and so I'm thinking more about Obama.

And so, to address your final point: Is it good for Obama to talk about Israel all the time? Yes. I agree with you, but for a slightly different reason. When I interviewed Obama on this subject, he said that one of the jobs of an American president is to hold up a mirror to Israel to show it where it might do better. This was his very polite way of suggesting that he wants to help Israel find a way out of the territories. The key, of course, is for Israelis to feel that a friend is holding up that mirror, not an enemy. Obama is trying very hard to show himself to be that friend.

To read Shmuel Rosner's first letter, click here; Goldberg's reply to it, here. Rosner's second letter is here.

RELATED: Rosner's original piece, "Enough About Israel, Already," for Slate, and Goldberg's post at the Atlantic.

Shmuel Rosner's blog is here.

The news has traveled well beyond the borders of blogland that McCain-Palin rallies might as well carry Wasilla uber alles banners for all the whipped-up participants at these gatherings who have called for the assassination of Barack Obama. Sarah Palin has since been compared to George Wallace for supposedly encouraging the bigots and rednecks and would-be James Earl Rays who hang upon her every word and share in her resentment of East Coast cosmopolitanism. (Can she plead that she was only an infant when Wallace ran for president as a segregationist, or does the fact that he later regretted his wicked behavior complicate her exoneration?) Meanwhile, her running-mate's hoary labeling of Obama's tax plan as "socialism" (a badge to be worn proudly, if you ask me) is evidently code for "beware the dangerous Negro," at least according to one columnist for the Kansas City Star who doesn't know that Paul Robeson was a Stalinist who tried to have real socialists imprisoned under the Smith Act.

Also this week, the New Yorker, ever ready to atone for its ill-received satiric cover of the Obamas, writes that the average GOP campaign stop a mere fortnight before Election Day carries a mood "not so much socialist as national-socialist." Lines like that always put me in mind of the era when the New Yorker was considered a middlebrow publication. It certainly picked a lousy time to invoke fascism, as one visible exponent of the real thing, Jorg Haider, just gave up the ghost in his native Austria in a headline-making car wreck. Surely that qualifies as talk of the town for urbane blue staters with tyrannical demagogues on the brain.

Given Obama's ever expanding lead in the polls, one would think his defenders -- or opponents of his rival, anyway -- would be confident enough to do the lazy intellectual and moral work of not resorting to histrionics and sub-Orwellian political cliches to close the deal.

It would be rather alarming if there was a phalanx of willing executioners marching in lockstep behind the GOP nominee, wouldn't it? The only problem with this well-trafficked conceit is that the reporting it's based on isn't quite true. Here's John Leo at the Huffington Post, remarking on how the mainstream press has been gobbling up one bogus item about a now-notorious Palin rally held the other week in Clearwater, Florida:

[S]omeone shouted "Kill him!" referring to the 60s bomber Bill Ayers, and a man shouted a racial slur at a network sound man (apparently the N-word), adding "sit down, boy."

These two shouts were clearly over the line. But do two extremist shouts from a crowd of 4,500 people establish the rally as a far-right hate fest? Not really. Florida reporters at the Palin speech did not detect a wave of racism and rage. Their coverage was routine, discovering no incipient fascism. William March of the Tampa Tribune, who was there, told me: "They booed Obama and the press, but that just makes it a normal Republican rally."

Two odd things happened at the hands of bloggers and pundits. The "Kill him!" line, directed toward Ayers was presented as a threat to assassinate Obama. And the single racist remark cited by Millbank became one of many racist remarks at the rally. A New York Times editorial made this same mistake, turning one racial comment into many.'

I remember reading somewhere that it was disingenuous to equate the antiwar movement in 2003 with its more colorful caricatures -- the "Bush = Hitler" lot, the ZOG-minded Israel-bashers, and the open backers of Saddam Hussein, who in fact helped organize some of the antiwar rallies under the activist heading of International ANSWER. (This low tactic of smearing an adversary by the fringe company he may unwillingly keep is one of the subjects of Eric Alterman's new book, Why We're Liberals.) But despite the fact that McCain wants nothing to do with the nasty people ready to vote for him, it's suggested or implied that he deliberately galvanizes their worst impulses.

As for the caricature McCain proudly aligns himself with, Palin has stoked the fires of a kulturkampf, it's true. But her rhetoric is in no way extraordinary or out of tune with decades-old movement conservative gripes about the virtues of the small town over the vices of Babylon. I find this talk stupid and tiresome myself, but how far a descent is it into the depths of populism to say that there are really two Americas? Palin is John Edwards run through the Hudson Institute.

Saul Bellow, in his brilliant satire Herzog, called this type of appeal to the folksy and provincial element "low-grade universal potato love." It's why, wrote Herzog in one of his feverish fantasy letters to Adlai Stevenson, Gen. Eisenhower won his election. Fat chance of it helping this time out, so can we cool it with the Nazi talk already?

One has by now seen the footage of McCain telling some old witch "No, ma'am" after she claimed that Obama was an Arab. Good. To this should also be added the following video, showing that there are indeed wingnuts and baleful conspiracists haunting McCain-Palin affairs. However, given the chance to confront them, official campaign spokesmen, and even supporters who do fancy a culture war, unfailingly do.

How nice, by the way, that a Kurdish Muslim gets paid to work for the Republican nominee in these post-racial times of ours.

[Note: This post is part of an ongoing dialogue between Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic and Shmuel Rosner of Slate on the need for U.S. national candidates to stop invoking the Jewish state every chance they get. Rosner's first letter can be read here; Goldberg's reply to it, here.]

Dear Jeffrey,

Since I'm on my way back to the east coast, where I'll spend the next two and a half weeks -- watching election returns somewhere in Ohio or Florida -- I'll soon also have an opportunity to de-sharpen those re-sharpened edges. Or maybe the sharper the better?

I guess our discussion can only move forward if we somewhat abandon our initial topic (why Israel should not be mentioned as mach) and try different angles with which to entertain our Jewcy readers. You asked about Israeli government officials, so I'll start with them, and generally speaking, I think these can be divided into three main groups.

A. Those supporting Obama for a while now. They include Democratic-leaning Israeli officials -- most supporting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton's and switching to Obama, few supporting Obama from the start. These officials generally believe that a Democrat will make America stronger - hence, will benefit Israel. Some also believe that Obama will get involved in the Israel-Arab peace process and help advance it in ways that Bush could or would not. The more realistic among them think this is mostly true for the Syria-track. There's a fair number of Israelis unhappy with Bush's tendency to oppose -- or not to encourage -- an Israeli Syrian dialogue. Anyway - these pro-Obama supporters consist the smallest of the three groups I was mentioning.

B. The second group will be the one of late-comers to the Obama cause. These people, I suspect, will grow in number as long as the polls show an apparent Obama victory (if they do). It is the international manifestation of the band-wagon effect: essentially, Israelis understand that Obama is going to win, so they might as well try to see the benefits and advantages of such candidate. Talking to the members of this group is pretty funny because one can easily detect the ways with which they try to rationalize an argument they aren't comfortable with. If polls, or atmosphere somehow changes -- these people will rush back to the group where they originally belong: McCain supporters.

C. This is basically the B group without the pretense, and its rapidly shrinking (Israelis, to they credit, were always very practical in nature). It consists of people who rather have McCain as the American president and are still willing to say it.

Their arguments -- and the argument of most knowledgeable Israelis supporting the experienced battle-tested McCain over Obama -- are quite clear: they want a president who understands the need to use power, and does not entertain the illusion that with charismatic personality one can change the Middle East (related to this topic, I really recommend that people will read your Atlantic piece on McCain and the use of power). In some ways, what they fear in Obama is the repetition of Bush the democracy-promoter. It's true that most Israelis think Bush was a friendly president, but readers should realise that very few of them really bought into the lets-democratize-the-region notion. Too realistic to believe, or too racist (Ariel Sharon famously said "after all, it is Arabs we are talking about here"), or too experienced -- Israelis liked the part of Bush that was supportive of security concerns, and vehement in fighting terror, but didn't as much appreciate his desire to transform the Mideast. Not that they don't want it -- they just don't think it's possible. Not now, not this way.

Surprisingly, what some of them see in Obama is a different kind of the same naivete. How's that for a surprisingly refreshing point of view?

Now back to the original topic of this exchange: does mentioning Israel helps Obama with Israelis? it really does. If one tries to find the positive aspects to this constant attention the country is getting, it is the fact that Israelis do feel now much more comfortable with Obama than they did a year or half a year ago.

I'll leave you the benefit of starting the discussion of McCain and Israel.

Best,
Rosner

To read Shmuel Rosner's first letter, click here; Goldberg's reply to it, here.

RELATED: Rosner's original piece, "Enough About Israel, Already," for Slate, and Goldberg's post at the Atlantic.

Shmuel Rosner's blog is here.

In these times of subliminal advertising, discreet media bias and general indirectness, it's nice to see someone just come out and blatantly drop hateful racial slurs. Oh, wait...no it's not; it's a horrible thing to do. So why has John McCain's continued use of the term "gook," as well as his unmistakably clear explanation of why he uses the idiom, not received much scrutiny during the Senator's presidential campaign?

I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday...."I will hate them as long as I live."
"Gook," he said, "is the kindest appellation I can give."
-- San Francisco Chronicle, 2000

Wow. That's not Trent Lott tripping over his words and praising a man who had supported segregation in 1948, this is the man who is currently the second-most-likely person to become the President of the United States explicitly reducing an entire ethnic group to a pejorative locution and then clarifying his word choice so that there could be no confusion as to why he used such hateful language. It's also not some utterance he made as he was exiting a POW camp back in his war days; the above comment was made during Miley Cyrus' lifetime!

As Raymond Leon Roker writes in the Huffington Post, there must be some reason why this story isn't getting more coverage. Barack Obama referred to his grandmother as a "typical white person," a couple of months ago and the story made headlines in every publication in America. It's bizarre to see a quote like McCain's and not be able to find a single public apology. That's how being a public figure works: You say what you really think; people get upset; you apologize and claim that you never meant it in the first place. Just ask Mel Gibson...

It hardly needs stating at this late hour that John McCain's fortitude as a tortured POW does not in itself qualify him for the office of the presidency. What it does do, however, is give an indication of his character and -- to coin a term that has fallen out of fashion except at cotillion dances and in classics departments -- his virtue. Self-sacrifice to the point of self-abnegation on behalf of one's comrades in arms is noble. In our morally honest moments, we're forced to admit as much of our enemies, as we did of brave German soldiers in World War II.

Now, you may think that McCain's activities on the stump--his lies about his rival, his selection of an unqualified running-mate, his manic-depressive campaign tactics--have eroded his integrity. But does opposing his candidacy entail opposing the man in full, past and present? Rolling Stone, a magazine that really does seem to believe Barack Obama was born of virgin womb, is too willing to declare that McCain's much-chronicled war heroism is a sham. Under the byline of Tim Dickinson, it's published a revisionist attack on the senator's years of captivity in Vietnam, a period that was thought (for good reason) to be unassailable.

There's nothing inherently wrong with investigating the possibly inflated stature of a public figure. Except that in this case, Dickinson dangles a gotcha in front of his readers' eyes, only to then remove it with as little fanfare or commentary as possible, leaving the impression that it still counts as substantial criticism. He leads by insinuation to the conclusion that McCain was a coward who violated the military's Code of Conduct by offering the Vietcong classified military information in exchange for medical treatment, right after his plane was shot down. (Technically, McCain later violated the COC by denouncing his own country; but this was after he had been tortured to a point that few human beings could withstand without submitting. His stoicism prior to reaching that threshold helped convince the Carter administration of the need to revise the COC.)

Here is how Dickinson describes this series of events, as told to him by John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, who was imprisoned alongside McCain in the "Hanoi Hilton" and thinks his now-famous co-captive was anything but extraordinary in his conduct:

McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. "I had to tell them," he insisted to Dramesi, "or I would have died in bed."

Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain's service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot's behavior as heroic — "he wasn't exceptional one way or the other" — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. "This business of my country before my life?" Dramesi says. "Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he'd be dead."

So deceiving your captors is disreputable. McCain divulged no military information, and if his initial offer was sincere, why were no follow-ups made as he languished with multiple untreated injuries and in presumably even greater pain? And why wasn't the first offer accepted, even if only for Communist propaganda purposes? Dickinson doesn't say. I also fail to see how using one's biography in order to save one's own life -- particularly when it endangers no one else's -- is somehow less heroic than dying an agonizing death, or suffering dismemberment. No mention here, to keep things in perspective, that McCain's naval pedigree did not in fact grant him an early release from prison because he expressly refused to parlay it into one.

Reason editor Matt Welch, author of The Myth of the Maverick, and no fan of McCain the politician, honorably comes to his subject's defense on this and other crucial points distorted and disfigured in the RS piece:

These charges are scurrilous. According to John G. Hubbell's book, "P.O.W.," "No American reached Hoa Lo in worse physical condition than McCain." That alone qualifies him as exceptional, no? And although a broken and disease-ridden McCain did violate the letter of the Code of Conduct when he offered more information than just name, rank and serial number in an attempt to receive medical attention for his life-threatening injuries, such minor capitulations were typical. Indeed, they were part of the reason that President Carter amended the code in 1977 to append the phrase "to the utmost of my ability."

The harsh truth is that the overwhelming majority of POWs, including McCain, "broke" under torture at some point. As would I, and certainly any writer for Rolling Stone, in about five seconds.

The Onion a while back joked that included in Jann Wenner's hyped re-design of Rolling Stone was a plan to make the magazine 10 years behind the times instead of 20. I'm not so sure he succeeded. Acting as if you wished to fulfill every conservative stereotype about a hopelessly tendentious "liberal media" seems very early 90's to me...

What’s ahead is not an endorsement of any one candidate; rather it is an analysis of their positions on taxes and redistribution of wealth from a Jewish perspective.

Joe the Plumber

The presidential debate this week discussed the story of Joe the Plumber at length. Joe wanted to buy a business and saw that under Obama’s tax plan he would be forced to pay an additional three percent tax if he earned above two hundred and fifty thousand dollars annually. Since the business he was buying made more than that amount, he was worried that his taxes would go up. Obama explained his plan to Joe and at the end said that, “if you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re going to be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you. Right now everybody is so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think that when you spread the wealth around it is good for everybody.”

Obama’s Cogent Point

To my unbiased and nonpartisan mind (I am a British citizen who cannot vote in this election, and I am a fierce independent) Obama was making a cogent point. Obama thinks that by giving the average person more money in their pockets through tax breaks, they will spend more of their money consuming, which in the end will be better for small businesses.

In contrast, John McCain feels that if you give tax breaks to the rich and to businesses, they will have more money to spend on innovation and hiring new people which in turn will grow the economy.

But Who is Right?

The question is who is right. Well I am not an economist; however, I do know a thing or two about religion, human nature and ethics. If given the opportunity, most entrepreneurs and business people will strive to earn more money and create jobs no matter how high they are taxed. There are no shortages of jobs or multi-millionaires in the UK (or Israel) where taxes on the rich and on businesses are considerably higher than they are in the United States. In fact, there are more jobs available in the UK which has a current unemployment rate of 5.7% than in the US that has a 6.1% current unemployment rate (Israel’s current unemployment rate is 7.3%). Conversely, when left to their own devices, most wealthy people—the exceptions always prove the rule—will not give significant amounts of their money to those less well off than themselves.

Redistribution of Wealth

This is why the Jewish religion mandates that the rich must share their wealth—sorry to use the phrase—with those less fortunate than themselves. Now, I have a natural and healthy distrust for government and I don’t really have confidence in them to American Dreamspread the wealth around competently.

In addition, I admit that the best type of wealth redistribution would be voluntary where people just gave charity out of the goodness of their hearts. And in my book, Jewish Wisdom for Business Success, I talk about what we call “spiritual entrepreneurship,” where the point of the entrepreneurial enterprise is to help others with the money made. Most people, however, are trying to make money to live the American dream of a large home, 2.5 kids, an expensive car, a dog and fancy vacations. On the whole, wanting “The American Dream” is a narcissistic quest rather than an altruistic one.

They Can Only See Themselves

Here a Hasidic tale is pertinent. A Hasidic master came to visit one of his followers who had become exceedingly wealthy. As he entered the wealthy man’s home, he saw poor people begging outside. And he watched how his wealthy follower walked by the beggers without noticing them.

The Hasid: A source of economic insightUpon entering his host’s palatial mansion, the Hasidic master took him over to the mirror and asked him what he saw.

“Myself of course,” he answered.

Then the master took him over to the window and asked him what he saw and he looked carefully.

“I see poor people begging,” he said.

The master asked him, “If this is glass and that is glass, then why do you see yourself in one but others through another?”

The rich man paused for a moment and then answered, “because the mirror has a silver backing on it and the window does not.”

Then the master made his point saying: “The moment you add silver all you see is yourself, and others become invisible.” The rich man understood the lesson and immediately scratched off some of the silver backing to his beautiful mirror so that every time he looked in it he would remember to think of the needs of others.

Prosperity naturally brings feelings of narcissism and self-centeredness in its wake. Even good people are prone to this pattern. Given that fact, it is unreasonable to expect a system where people voluntarily redistribute their wealth to work. This is why religion makes tithing obligatory.

So given this reality, Obama’s tax plan seems to be the better alternative—it seems to make the most moral, religious and economic sense.

Not your average get-rich-quick schemeRecession-busting Tip

This transitions beautifully into my final recession-busting tip for this week: The Torah says, “Asser te’asser [You shall surely tithe] the entire crop of your planting” (Deuteronomy 14:22). The Talmud plays on the doubling of the words and says, “Asser titasher [Tithe that you may become rich].” This means that by giving at least ten percent (asser means ten percent) of your income to charity you will become rich. In fact according to the Talmud this is the only thing one is actually allowed to test G-d with. And according to the Kabbalists, the Divine guarantee is that the donor will receive a return of three hundred percent.

So, if you want to prosper during the current recession, make sure to give to charity. That way, you will have partnered with G-d, who guarantees you a three hundred percent return on capital invested in charity.

Rabbi Levi Brackman, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Business Success, spent the last week guest-blogging on Jewcy with fellow co-author Sam Jaffe. This is his parting post. Want more? Get his book!

Come children, let me dandle you on my knee as I tell you savage tales of pot, porn, punk rock, and professional wrestling. Your ears may burn and your hearts will beat with the violence of untamed jungle drums, but I promise to never lie to you.

After three weeks of intense rehearsals in our Sound and Fury Laboratory, my collection of musical terrorists is finally ready for prime time, and it is all gonna go down tonight. In a circus tent.

Your author, wielding the Guitar of Truth: Don't be square — Read his book! See him live!

For those of you who have been living in a cave, tonight will be what has become known as simply The Big Show — my band, the Rocket Train Delta Science Arkestra, featuring Jon Spencer, will be backing me up as I twirl druggy adventures and filthy confessions from my book I Have Fun Everywhere I Go. Joining me will be superstars Jonathan Ames, Amanda Stern, and Jewcy.com’s very own Rachel Shukert, whose tales of heavy petting and teenage hijinks are going to knock you on your ass.

It’s a strange business trying to put on a show of groovy tunes and far-out storytelling. Let’s face it — literary events usually have all the dramatic impact of a stool-softening enema. We are changing that. Tonight, the revolution begins. We are the New Bohmemians, born in the wake of eight years of culture death and riding a wave of hope. This is your chance to be on the right side of history. Come on down — if you think you can handle it. There will be no punches pulled, no holds barred. It will truly be a Night of Champions. (Scroll down to see our super suave flyer and allthe 411.. for more info, check out www.rockettrain.com). See you all there!

* * *

And now let’s pick up the story of my poor, misguided mother.

In the last week I have received dozens of angry emails—maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that calling her a “racist” and a “moron” was not going to make me any new friends?

Last week I called the Ancient One and told her I was making her my pet project.

"If you talk politics with me, I will hang up the phone," she told me. She has never been lauded for her open mind.

I made my usual pitch — the economy (she watches the stockmarket like a lion watching her cubs), the future reproductive rights of her granddaughter, and what I always think is going to be a clincher, "Why would you vote for someone who doesn’t think that all Americans should have the same rights?"

Silence.

"You would still love me if I were gay, right?"

"Michael, I am going to hang up the phone."

"Alright, just tell me this. Would you rather I dated a Jewish man, or a black woman?"

She hates it when I bust her like that. It is a low blow, I admit it, but there is only one acceptable answer and we both know it. ("As long as you are happy.")

Finally, though, she was engaged. For a moment.

"I am voting for McCain," she told me flatly. See? I told you she was a moron. "But it won’t matter, because I am voting in Florida."

"Huh? It will matter more there, don’t you think?"

"It will be a —," and here she used a Yiddish word I didn’t know, which frustrates me, because tossing Yiddish around and wading in my Jew roots is my shtick. "It means that it is a waste."

In the tank for Obama.

"But…"

"Everyone I know in Florida is voting for Obama."

And there you have it America, from a soldier with her boots on the ground. Forget all the polls. When a migrating Jew like my mother brings in fresh intelligence from the canasta playing hordes, you know you are getting the fresh dope.

And then she hung up on me, God bless her.

Mike Edison, author of I Have Fun Everywhere I Go, spent the past two weeks guest blogging on Jewcy. This is his parting post.  Want more?  Buy his book!

This post is continued from: BOOK CLUB: Pot, Porn, Palin, and Racist Jewish Mothers

You need this book: or you might come down with something...Brian Frazer has used his week of Jewcy blogging to expel some common and very current political frustration.  He began with a peek at his book, telling an introspective yet entertaining tale about his brother's wedding.  Then he turned to politics, putting wrinkles on the faces of Biden's botox obsessors, reacted to the second presidential debate, begged the forgiveness of those he has insulted, and devised a painfully amusing plan for preventing another economic meltdown.  Want more of Frazer's frenzy?  Buy his book!

Does your blood pressure surge if the car in front of you turns without signaling? Do your neck veins pulsate when a cashier takes too long to ring you up? Does relaxing seem like it'll have to wait until you're dead? Then your name could very well be Brian Frazer.  On paper, Frazer is the world's healthiest guy. He eats right, exercises regularly, gets plenty of sleep, has never smoked and has missed only one day of flossing in the last five years. But inside he's a swirling vortex of angst, capable of contracting a new malady every month. Once Frazer realized that all his ills were tied to stress, he went on a quixotic quest for calm, venturing into everything from Tai Chi, serotonin blockers and Kabbalah to an unfortunate incident involving pineapple-chicken curry at a Craniosacral therapy session. Never has the road to wellville taken so many unforeseen turns.  Achingly funny, uncomfortably true and always entertaining, Hyperchondriac is just the medicine for anyone who wants to take it down a notch.
A- Entertainment Weekly

You'd be hard pressed to find a decent amount of medicare-qualifying folks who know what a blog is... But a vlog?  Now, that's pushing it.  Nevertheless, old school Jewish comedian Jackie Mason has tapped into the new-fangled youngsters' technology like few of his peers.  But don't let him fool you.  When it comes to politics, the generation gap is clear.  Jewcy recently featured a video and a follow-up of Sarah Silverman's, "The Great Shlep."  While it surely produced many Yiddish-intoned guffaws over Rosh Hashanah dinner, it has also sparked a backlash from the aforementioned grandpa of Jewish comedy.  Mason's take: Sarah's got some chutzpah telling you how to vote.  She's a sick yenta! (His words...)  We'll let him tell you directly, and see what you think, since you're the boss of your ballot.

Just to give a clear picture of Mason's record on political commentary, have a look at this previous vlog entry of his, and then ask yourself what gap he's closing.

The N.Y. Times reports this nice bit of news, that Obama has opened up a sizable lead over McCain in the latest CBS poll. Obama’s favorables are up to the highest they’ve ever been, McCain’s are down to the lowest they’ve ever been.John McCain: Reppin' on the mic

I’m not foolish enough to believe that this is the end of the campaign or even the beginning of the end. There is a long way to go till November 4th and five weeks is a lifetime in presidential politics. After all, the bailout fiasco which apparently did so much damage to McCain’s image, was a very unusual development. One doesn’t know how the fallout will play out from this. Does the bailout have “legs” as a political issue (as I suspect it does)? Or will it recede into the political woodwork as Katrina did for Bush, in a few days or weeks? As long as it continues to occupy the public’s attention, McCain remains wounded.

And this is not a helpless candidate by any means. He can still land serious blows on Obama and potentially derail his campaign in any number of ways.

Bush's favorability rating is down to 22%! The lowest since Harry Truman in the Korean War. Who'd a thunk it only five years ago when he rode high in the saddle into the Iraq War?

One of the most delicious pieces of news from this story concerns Sarah Palin’s receding prospects:

The Pew poll found that 51 percent of respondents said she was not qualified to be president, compared with 37 percent who said she was. That is a reversal from early last month, when 52 percent of respondents said Ms. Palin was qualified to be president.

She’s lost 15 percentage points in less than a month. That’s a candidate in free fall, perhaps without a parachute given her recent performance in Katie Couric’s CBS interview. When I first started writing about her after McCain chose her I wondered why the American public wasn’t seeing what I was seeing. My hope and conviction was that this would be a process that wouldn’t happen instantaneously. But that a campaign of a thousand paper cuts, perhaps inflicted by liberal bloggers and her own hubris, would eventually bring her to her knees, which is more or less what has happened. Now, let’s see if this impression is reinforced in tomorrow’s V.P. debate.

Like many people who have covered John McCain, I think of him as a deeply serious man, preoccupied with America's defense and its position in the world. So I've been confused for the past few days, trying to figure out why he's allowing his campaign to make a circus of this election, leveling unserious and dishonest accusations about Barack Obama's positions on sex education and Sarah Palin.

Then it came to me: The answer can be found in my new Atlantic cover story! (How's that for Washington-based solipsism?) The story grapples with John McCain's philosophy of war, and in particular with the doctrine of preemption, which McCain still endorses. So do I, in certain cases, but that's not the point. The point is that McCain knows that preemption isn't the easiest sell these days: "It's very hard to run for president on this idea right now," he told me.

So, what do you do when one of your core ideas is out of sync with the predispositions of the American public? You spend your days talking about lipstick on pigs. This might win him the election, but I'd rather see him debate preemption.

Michael Chabon: contemplates sarah palinMichael Chabon is an expert on a great many things, especially hummus and Alaska. He seemed like the perfect person to turn to for a conversation about Sarah Palin:

Jeffrey Goldberg: Isn't it great that Michael Palin's sister is running for vice president?

Michael Chabon: Jeffrey, I fear it might actually be kind of sad that I had exactly the same thought when I first heard her name. At least we can safely assume, at this point, that Governor Palin fully appreciates the deep wisdom contained in that old axiom: nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

JG: Is Sarah Palin Jewish? Her husband was in the Yiddish Policemen's Union. Or maybe the Steelworkers, I forget.

MC: It's unlikely and, I feel, sort of weird the way this Alaskan lady's fortunes have become caught up, and so quickly, with those of the Jews. An exhaustive search of press mentions on Lexis-Nexis reveals that, until very recently, "Alaska" and "Jews" had been included in the same sentence only 18 times, ever. I know I probably deserve some of the credit for this uptick, but I decline to accept it.

JG: What's your favorite Alaskan food?

MC: I know you want me to say moose. You probably also want me to point out that moose (properly slaughtered of course) is kosher. Same goes for reindeer. I have eaten both, in Juneau, Sitka and Wrangell. Reindeer sausage. Mooseburger. Also fiddlehead ferns and lingonberries. But I'm going to have to go with lox.

JG: Alaska. Crazy place, or what?

MC: It's crazy beautiful, that's for sure. I found it a dark place, and not just because it was literally dark much of time, during my second visit, in late winter. Also, I found it (the place, not the people) hostile, and not just in the sense that wilderness is generally said to be hostile. I kept thinking of that bit from Twin Peaks, where the sheriff says, "There is something very, very strange in these old woods. Call it what you want, a darkness, a presence." Almost everything humans have built there is unbelievably ugly. That might have something to do with the air of resentment given off by the underlying terrain.

JG: Do you think Barack Obama has placated whatever fears elderly Jews have of him?

MC: Huh, I don't know, can elderly Jews actually be placated? The Israeli government, as you know, has squandered billions of shekels to date on one ill-starred placation program after another, with results that have been uniformly disappointing, leading it to issue the famous finding: You just can't alter a kocker.

But if anyone can do it, Obama can.

JG: Do you think McCain was a) smart, or b) stupid, to pick Palin as his running mate?

MC: I think the answer is probably both more pathetic and more chutzpadich than either a) or b) would imply.

JG: Are any of your children named Bristol, Willow or Track?

MC: I was kind of excited when I thought Willow was a Buffy shout-out. Like, how cool, she named her kid after a Jewish lesbian witch! It was part of this weird, innocent spasm of credit-extending that I experienced on first seeing the Governor in action last Friday. But the moment was very short-lived, alas. I bet she doesn't even watch Buffy. The names are kind of awesome, in my opinion. But then I have a son named Ezekiel Napoleon Waldman Chabon.

[This is cross-posted from Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic blog, which we think is great, and you should visit often]