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MCCAIN COMPARES PROFESSOR HE FUNDED TO NEO-NAZIS.
It's kind of hard to be shocked when McCain does something dishonest, but his attempt to capitalize on Obama's relationship with Palestinian professor and former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, and to accuse The Los Angeles Times of bias* for not releasing a tape of a farewell party Obama attended on his behalf has to be one of the most craven:
"The Los Angeles Times refuses to make that videotape public. I'm not in the business of talking about media bias but what if there was a tape with John McCain with a neo-Nazi outfit being held by some media outlet?
In that case, John McCain has some explaining to do, because McCain distributed several hundred thousand dollars to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies while he chaired the International Republican Institute. Scott Horton describes the work as promoting "civic consciousness and engagement and the development of democratic values in the West Bank," which sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Unfortunately, to McCain, it sounds like Nazism, which begs the question of why exactly he gave the group so much money, and whether McCain himself has been replaced by some kind of robot controlled by a right wing blogger in a secret compound somewhere.
All indications are that McCain's connections to Khalidi are much closer than Obama's. But if Obama's relationship to Khalidi is somehow disqualifying or dangerous, then McCain's is even more so, and reporters should ask him about it when he chooses to bring up Khalidi's name. Of course, it doesn't sound like Khalidi is a bad guy at all, and that the work he did and that McCain funded was completely worthwhile.
--A. Serwer
*The LA Times has said they were given the tape on condition it not be released, but they wrote an article describing it.
COMMENTS (7)
McCain has his own connection to Khalidi. McCain has chaired the International Republican Institute since 1993, which in 1998 and 1999 funded the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, founded by the Palestinian scholar.However, McClain knows about Facist economic policies: Soon after his rise to power, Mussolini defined his economic stance by saying that:
“The [Fascist] government will accord full freedom to private enterprise and will abandon all intervention in private economy."
Posted by: Larry Linn | October 29, 2008 6:03 PM
Every time McCain tries a tactic like this, it blows up in his face. He derides Acorn, then a video surfaces from 2 years ago showing McCain praising Acorn. He tries the terrorist attack against Obama, and it turns out he's been giving said "terrorist" money. Hoist by his own petard, as the great bard would say, or as Angela Basset, playing Tina Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It" said as she finally stood up to Ike Turner's (so wonderfully played by Laurence Fishbourne):
"That's the best you can do? You can't do no better than that?! Come on!"
Posted by: Chris Tharr | October 29, 2008 8:25 PM
Khalidi is a nothing, a worthless pseudo-intellectual twerp, equal parts banal careerist and maniac dervish yammering on about Palestinian "grievances" and "revenge" against those wicked, horrible Jews. Shame on Columbia for employing him as anything other than a valet car parker. And shame on McIdiot and Obama for associating with dirtbags like him.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 29, 2008 10:54 PM
Khalidi is a nothing, a worthless pseudo-intellectual twerp, equal parts banal careerist and maniac dervish yammering on about Palestinian "grievances" and "revenge" against those wicked, horrible Jews. Shame on Columbia for employing him as anything other than a valet car parker. And shame on McIdiot and Obama for associating with dirtbags like him.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 29, 2008 11:01 PM
Anonymous,
You are unintentionaly hilarious. Somehow, I have the feeling that you've never read a single page of Khalidi's work.
Posted by: Peter H | October 30, 2008 1:31 AM
Small point: It doesn't "beg" the question. Begging the question is a logical fallacy in which a conclusion is assumed in the premises. It raises the question.
Posted by: Brian | October 30, 2008 10:27 AM
The following is a letter I received from a cousin who has a PHD is mideast studies:
My friends...Up until this point in the campaign many of you have written to me for clarification and information regarding Middle Eastern history and Islam. I have been happy to oblige, especially considering how disgusted I have been with McCain’s distortions of history and desperate use of racism and hate speak in order to terrify Americans into voting for him. His campaign has made me ashamed of him, a Republican who I used to believe was a man of integrity has fallen into the power hungry trap of winning at any cost.
However, I now have a new gripe, and this one is personal. I sat down this evening for my daily dose of MSNBC when I was bombarded with conversations regarding a name that I know very well: Rashid Khalidi. I saw clips of Sarah Palin derogatorily and dismissively mispronouncing his foreign name. I heard McCain quoted as warning us to be careful of Obama and his secret PLO connections. Fortunately, MSNBC quickly tidied things up by pointing out McCain’s hypocrisy. It turns out that as head of a Republican committee McCain had twice funded Khalidi's work. However, what I did not hear, and what I needed to hear was a fair representation of whom this supposed PLO spokesman, Rashid Khalidi, really is. Well the truth is that I did not need them to tell me because I know this man, and I used to know him well. He was my graduate advisor at the University of Chicago and he is now at Columbia University. I must immediately correct McCain’s lies. Khalidi was not a PLO spokesman. He served as a member of the Palestinian negotiating team during the American initiated Oslo Accords. Supporters of Israel must not demonize someone for being Palestinian. Rashid Khalidi is exactly the kind of Palestinian with whom we want Barack Obama and other American leaders to associate. He is a liberal intellectual who is an expert on Middle Eastern History and advocates peace and compromise with Israel. He has even proven this by sitting down at the negotiating table with Israel. Rashid is a loyal American who served both his country and his heritage by supporting the American sponsored Palestinian-Israeli peace initiative. How dare McCain demonize a top American educator simply because of his ethnicity and his Muslim name. McCain reached new depths in his bottom feeding today!
Elizabeth Misrahi
Posted by: Neil Reichline | October 31, 2008 11:08 AM