Feeds: 
symbol identifies content for paid subscribers only.
WHY YOU SHOULD BUY THE IRON CAGE.
Okay, one more quick Khalidi comment. Over at the Motherblog, Tim Fernholz analyzes the controversy and concludes, "no one knows who Khalidi is outside of the media and high information voters, and an even smaller universe of people cares. The attacks by McCain are reprehensible...but ultimately this is not an election about small stuff. This is a big stuff election." If you want a one-line summary of why John McCain's Distract-O-Tron 3000 strategy has failed to connect, you can't do much better than that.
Meanwhile, Khalidi is, as everyone keeps telling you, a well-respected and incisive scholar of the Middle East in general, and the Palestinian struggle for nationhood in particular. Take this Amazon.com review of his seminal book The Iron Cage, which investigates why Palestinian civil society is so curiously immature:
Khalidi poses the question of why Palestinian political development is so weak, certainly not up to the standards of contemporary high-income republics.[...]Sure sounds racist to me!In the subsequent period from the early 1960s on, Khalidi gives the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) credit for three essential achievements in political organization: (1) winning most Palestinians' recognition of the PLO as their first-ever central point for political cooperation, (2) winning Arab countries' recognition of a Palestinian national cause, and (3) finally winning global recognition that the Palestinian nation existed.
At the same time, Khalidi also identifies three failings: (1) not setting up internal democracy and efficient service bureaucracies, (2) not being categorical enough when they gave up armed resistance to the Israelis after the mid-1970s, and (3) neglecting Palestinians outside the West Bank and Gaza when Israel allowed the PLO leadership to return in the mid-1990s.
Presumably, this experience has not been a pleasant one for Khalidi. But it would be nice if some good emerged from it in the form of broader familiarity with his important works. So next time you hear Hannity explain how Rashid Khalidi urinates on a Haggadah during full moons, head over to Amazon and pick up a copy of The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood
COMMENTS (5)
With Obama as our President, we will no longer need to see tapes of him that the press doesn't want us to see. We will no longer need critical newspapers in his traveling press corps. We will not assume releasing unfavorable tapes of Obama would get newspapers ostracized. Instead, we will criticize people for wanting to see unflattering reports about Obama.
We will be told there is nothing to concern ourselves with, and we will accept it. Because Obama will be our President.
Posted by: kaybeel | October 31, 2008 1:25 PM
And that has exactly what to do with Rashid Khalidi's actually existing writings?
Posted by: bgn | October 31, 2008 2:55 PM
Khalidi is perhaps the penultimate example of the bizarre lack of self-consciousness on display by McCain and Friends.
Distortions, lies. character assassination of innocent third parties, nothing is out of bounds for McCain's handlers. When McCain's operation is called out, they claim --they-- are the victims of unfair treatment. Endless whining about poor press coverage (to the point that the press itself is cowed into self-scrutiny about bias) even as McCain continues to spew manure all over the landscape.
I wonder if McCain will apologize to Khalidi when this over? For that matter, how about poor old "Bob the Builder", humiliated on network television?
Victim of Bush? Economic circumstances? Unfair coverage? No, McCain is running a crap campaign, that's why he's losing. All the other stuff is just excuses.
Posted by: Doug Bostrom | October 31, 2008 3:07 PM
Great suggestion Ezra. Just placed my order.
Cheers!
Posted by: Tim | October 31, 2008 5:04 PM
"With Obama as our President, we will no longer need to see tapes of him that the press doesn't want us to see."
LOL.... You're actually right, since we will have far more pertinent data to view, like his policies and his politics. Silly conspiracy theories like those you are buying into will be just as irrelevant then as they are today.
Posted by: PaulB | October 31, 2008 7:03 PM