Of course not–if Obama’s constructive ties to an unrepentant domestic terrorist aren’t swaying anyone, his ties to a one-time maybe terrorist spokesperson won’t sway anyone either. Nor should they: as I’ve said on this blog about a half-dozen times by now, Khalidi’s views on Israel aren’t hysterical or anti-Semitic or even particularly anti-Zionist. They’re civil and even reasonable even if they’re informed by certian radical undercurrents–he’s not a Massad or an Anidjar, even if the three of them would find plenty to agree on.

Suffice it to say, I’d hope that whatever brief friendship Obama had with Khalidi wouldn’t be enough to convince him to cut Israel loose as president. I’m not a huge Obama fan myself, but I think he has slightly better political judgement than that–nevertheless, I’d love to know what’s on that tape the LA Times got ahold of. I’m willing to bet you we’ll find out by Tuesday–and I’m willing to bet you it has Obama making some passing mention of “the rights of Palestinians” or otherwise flirting with what’s popularly perceived as anti-Israel euphemism. And it still won’t matter, unless the video also includes Obama singing the PLO National Anthem or something….does it?

This weekend, the Commentariat was suffering the residual effects of a temporarily severe, but overall inept, web-borne attempt at bringing down the fledgling Specblogs empire. While this prevented us from giving you the up-to-the-second analysis on which you probably, almost certainly rely, I’m happy to report that the enemy has been beaten back, and that your blog is back online. In the great words of our president, we will treat those who aid and abed the terrorists no different from how we’d treat the terrorists themselves. “Verrrry strange group stating that they’re from Morocco” (our tech editors’ words, not mine)–you’re on notice.

Also on notice are the handful of undecideds who tuned into Sean Hannity’s America last night. What they were notified of: Obama’s ties to noted terrorist spokesperson and occasional Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, ties that were last relevant (albeit barely) when they were deployed as a subtle anti-Obama smear by desperate Hilary supporters. It isn’t surprising that Khalidi is being brought up in the thick of this quadrennial’s Mud Month, and the transparent desperation of the Hannity segment (Khal wrote Resurrecting Empire on Bill Ayers’ kitchen table. Holy shit!) similarly argues against giving another word of attention to the Obama-Khalidi tie. The connection is super-circumstantial, even in the context of the still-prevalent argument that Obama’s ties to the far left speak to some latent intellectual proclivity even if they don’t correspond to any of his publicly stated views. Contrary to what Bwog says, Khalidi actually did work for WAFA in the late 70s. But the Hannity segment proves that it’s a major strain on the imagination to figure out how this factors into Obama’s worldview.

Of course, this segment factors into the popular and not totally unfounded Columbia-as-everything-that’s-wrong-with-liberalism narrative, one that tends to ignore the self-isolating nature of the academy in general. The guilt-by-association canard would have a lot less sting if we had universities that could foster intellectual pluarity rather than allowing faculty to entrench their particular ideological cliques in positions of permanant academic and intellectual authority.  The Khalidi charge ties Obama to a monolithic instutitional left far more than it ties him to the so-called “Arab Lobby”–I’m not saying that this is fair; only that this is one aspect of the culture wars that universities have been more than complicit in perpetuating.

It’s no secret that CC Alum and Illinois Senator Barack Obama isn’t too eager to show his face at 116th and Broadway. Far be it for Fair Alma to stand for such disloyalty. Her revenge this weekend was as swift as it was quietly spectacular–literary even, based as it is on the ironic fact that the farther Obama gets from Morningside Heights, the closer it seems to get to him.

This weekend’s news cycle was marked by two interrelated setbacks for the Obama campaign, one brought on by an overzealous newsmedia, the other by the candidate’s astounding lack of common sense. The first was the LA Times’ irresponsible piece on the Obamas’ “connection” to pro-Palestinian academics and activists, an article based more on a vulturous (and not to mention culturally and politically insensitive) concept of guilt-by-association than on the candidate’s actual policy positions or personal beliefs. The second was Obama’s pop-psychoanalysis of small-town America, an unfathomably insulting statement on par with Howard Dean’s infamous “Confederate flag” gaffe back in 2003.

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It would be interesting to see someone game theory the Israel Lobby phenomenon. Now I’m no econ-math major, but I imagine such a thought experiment would go a little like this: something of an anti-Israel nature seeps into the mainstream. Like AARP, CAIR or any group of concerned citizens that cares passionately about the ideas, policies and constituencies it represents, the Lobby goes into aggressive spin (or attack, as the case may be) mode. But Israel advocates are as self-conscious as they are sensitive, for reasons that have more to do with the historical fragility of Jewish political gains and the present-day fragility of the Middle East than it does with straight-up tribalism or neocon paranoia. Nevertheless, the lobbyists attempt to pre-empt their critics while a media fascinated with the very idea of the Israel Lobby tries to pre-empt the pre-empters. Inject a bit of presidential politics into the mix, and this PR-brinksmanship leads otherwise reputable news sources down the blindest of alleyways.

One such alleyway is Barack Obama’s friendship with Rashid Khalidi, which is at the center of this report in the LA Times. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again (and keep in mind that I’m generally supportive of Israel and relatively lukewarm on Obama): this friendship says less than nothing about Obama’s stance on Israel, and even less about his fitness to be president.

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