Keith Olbermann offers a little friendly advice to John McCain on how this whole "guilt by association" thing works: Do not play up your opponent’s "guilt" when you are more closely linked to the allegedly guiltifying person than he is.
Tactics aside, the McCain campaign’s insinuations that Khalidi is an anti-Semitic terrorist are slanderous, loony, and downright racist. Rashid Khalidi is an excellent American, the sort of person anyone would be proud to have as a friend.
He’s an esteemed scholar, a beloved teacher, a champion of human rights, and a regular commenter on Mid East issues for prestigious national media outlets.
Khalidi’s books have gotten rave reviews in the New York Times from such wild-eyed rabble rousers as Tom Friedman and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
John McCain did a joint interview with Khalidi on CBS with Leslie Stahl in 1991!
If Prof. Khalidi were known as "Joe the Mid East Studies Prof" we wouldn’t be in the absurd position of defending him against the non sequiturs of the McCain campaign. The McCain crew wouldn’t have singled Khalidi out if he name didn’t sound sorta terroristy to the basest of the Republican base.
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Thanks Lindsay.
I saw Khalidi on the Lehrer News Hour and was so impressed I wrote him an email. He sent me a nice reply.
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This whole thing with Khalidi is such a tempest in a teapot. After all, the “PLO” is the bunch of Palestinians we are supposed to be ‘for’ isn’t it? I thought Hamas was the bad dudes! Oh, nevermind.
It’s priceless since McSlime got tied back to…boogeyman music…more scarey music…WILLIAM AYRES!!!
Whoooooo!
Oooooh! Y’think that Leslie Stahl footage (”6o minutes”) will show up on Sunday? Senator John pallin’ around with a Palestinian that he suggests an association makes his rival a “terrorist”? The same guy the McCain-fronted Republican Democracy Organization gave a half million dollars to around the same time?
Wow! That would be interesting to see on the Sunday evening before the election.
Maybe Senator Johnny should not have opened THAT Pandora’s box!
Here the McCain campaign is screaming “show the footage…show the footage” and they are just asking for the presentation of the publicly broadcast footage of his appearance with Khalidi days before the election. If Khalidi is supposed to be a spokesperson for the PLO, and the PLO is our enemy, then what’s McCain doing appearing on the same program with him, and also giving Rashidi’s organization funding.
That “60 Minutes” footage wasn’t “embargoed” – and there must be a lot of people with archived copies of it out there somewhere. If “60 Minutes” doesn’t show it, someone else surely will. So I suspect CBS will have to jump on it or lose the “scoop”
This is just one more idiotic move by a campaign that couldn’t do anything right.