McCain's Halloween Tactics

I was driving up to Riverdale yesterday to retrieve Little Babe from choir practice when my BlackBerry buzzed.

It was an anti-Obama ROBB (relative of Bungalow Babe), calling to ask me how I could possibly overlook Obama's association with the Monster of the Moment -- Rashid Khalidi.

So I flipped the speaker button on my BlackBerry and responded to the McCain campaign's latest smear-by-association tactic, a tired and wholly ineffective effort to link Barack Obama with a super-scary personality, by

• Exaggerating the demonic qualities of the particular person, and
• Exaggerating Obama's "friendship" or connection with said scary person

Readers of this blog will recall my penchant for hitting the Reply All button when I receive a hateful chain email.

Because of my Reply All response two weeks ago to such an email that revived the Secret Muslim identity rumor PLUS the Bill Ayers "close" connection, I have been excommunicated from some anti-Obama listservs, thank God.

So, I guess I missed the latest hysteria surrounding the Rashid Khalidi "discovery," the flurry of urgent emails going around that portrayed the revelation of this insidious "relationship" to be as momentous as today's archeological findings from Israel. (See http://www.cnn.com/.)

I leave it up to informed American voters to visit the innumerable news sites that debunk the Obama-Khalidi cabal and take the zing out of the alarming allegations about Khalidi's past associations with the PLO or alleged anti-Semitism.

I also leave it up to informed American voters to read about John McCain's past financial support of an initiative headed by Rashid Khalidi. Kinda falls into the "look who's calling the kettle black," category, dontcha think?

And while I am hardly on the record as saying that Rashid Khalidi is good news for the Jews, I argue against the demonization of someone with a complex CV, yes, but who cannot be lumped together with sworn enemies of Israel or the Jewish people.

So, I don't know if my arguments made a dent on my anti-Obama relative but I did have a chance to reiterate my mantra:

• Stop watching only Fox News; it is propagandistic. Expand your news sources
• Stop believing every rabble-rousing, Republican-sponsored email that comes your way
• Investigate what leading Jewish groups have said about Barack Obama
• Get out of the shul or shtetl where anti-Obamaism has become the new religion and hear from Jews with other views

On the morning of Halloween, the tactics of the McCain campaign have become crystal clear: if Palin and policy fail to persuade the American public, go knocking door to door and try to scare people to death with the message that Obama's presidency will be a horror show.