October 31, 2008

The Obama Tapes***

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THE OBAMA TAPES….In an update on Michael Malone’s General Theory of Media Tankiness for Barack Obama, John Derbyshire offers a Special Theory of Media Tankiness for Barack Obama that applies only to the LA Times. Sam Zell and Hank Paulson are involved. And a unicorn.

For those of you with the good sense not to have followed this story, it’s about a piece the Times ran a few months ago describing a testimonial dinner in Chicago for Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies now at Columbia University. The Times has a videotape of Barack Obama’s speech at the event, and wingers everywhere are demanding that they release it so that Fox News can put it on a 24/7 loop over the weekend. The Times says it can’t release the tape because they promised their source they wouldn’t, but conservoland unanimously agrees that only fools and knaves believe this transparently ridiculous story. The Times is really holding it back because Khalidi shouted “Death to Israel” on the tape while Bill Ayers lit an Israeli flag on fire, and Barack Obama laughed and clapped while all this was going on.

It’s unclear, of course, why the Times even revealed the existence of this testimonial dinner in the first place if they were so in the tank for Obama, but I’m sure the wingers have an explanation for that. Conspiracy theorists always do. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: I don’t actually know anything about Khalidi myself, but it’s worth noting that he’s a perfectly respectable scholar with mildly pro-Palestinian views that the McCain campaign is trying to use in one of their usual cackhanded efforts to convince the rubes that Obama is a radical/Muslim/Jew-hating/terrorist sympathizer. Hell, even Marty Peretz is standing up for Khalidi. Jo-Ann Mort has more here.

Only four more days until this vile swill finally comes to an end.

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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