Six Degrees of Barack Obama

First Reverend Wright. Then Bill Ayers. Now another of Barack Obama's trivial acquaintances is serving as the conduit for the McCain camp's aspersions: Rashid Khalidi, a "radical" Columbia professor with reported ties to the PLO.

It speaks to the strength of Obama's candidacy that the dirtiest mud they can find to sling at him amounts to nothing more than six degrees of separation. The PLO has a tenuous link to a Columbia professor, who is a minor onetime associate of Barack Obama; therefore Obama is... an anti-Israeli terrorist sympathizer? These attacks don't sully Obama's name as much as they advertise the desperation of the McCain campaign.

Throughout their lives, politicians shake a lot of hands. Those hands belong to many people with different viewpoints, some of which are bound to be unconventional or objectionable.

A few years back, John McCain had glowing words for Jerry Falwell, an intolerant beast who blamed 9/11 on homosexuals and the pro-choice movement. Palin and her husband have a cozy relationship with an Alaskan secessionist movement. I'm sure if the Obama campaign wanted to, they could dredge the seafloor of McCain's long career and bring to light even more unsettling associations than these. But Obama and his campaign have demonstrated a cool, mature confidence that rises above that kind of dreck.

In the last debate, John McCain sternly reminded Obama, "I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." McCain could use some similar advice himself. Senator McCain, Barack Obama is not everyone he has ever met. You can use the last few days of your campaign articulating your vision for America, or you can keep thumbing through Obama's Rolodex. Your call.

Scott McClellan's Secret

Colin Powell's support of the Obama campaign was deservedly big news this week. And Rush Limbaugh's analysis thereof was predictably asinine.

Limbaugh clearly felt threatened because Powell, a duly respected military man and former member of the Bush administration, is changing teams. So Limbaugh shrugged off the news by asserting that Powell is supporting Obama because of race. His comments drew immediate and harsh criticism, but he didn't back down. Thinking himself slyly perspicacious, Limbaugh quipped, "[I'm] researching Powell's past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal white candidates that he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with."

The problem with his breezy, fatuous analysis is its ahistoricity. To look at Powell's past endorsements is to conveniently disregard the present circumstances, to wit, a litany of Republican failures and the poor choices of the McCain campaign. Powell himself cited these factors as reasons for his endorsement, but Limbaugh, as usual, prefers a fantasy world in which apostate conservatives can be motivated only by ulterior, irrational motives.

This poses a problem regarding Scott McClellan, who formally announced his support for Obama today. He's also a former member of the Bush administration who's almost certainly never endorsed a candidate like Obama before. So what's that all about?

I predict that tomorrow, Rush Limbaugh, cigar clamped between his fat jowls, will announce on his radio program that Scott McClellan is secretly black.

Christopher Columbus

Columbus Day. The day we celebrate Columbus - according to the popular imagination, a visionary explorer who proved the Earth was round and discovered the New World.

It's just that he didn't prove the Earth was round. And of course he wasn't the first to discover the Americas. Oh, and he oversaw genocide, pimped little girls out as prostitutes, and got the transatlantic slave trade underway. But sure, great guy.

Columbus did not prove the Earth was round. In fact, the ancients understood the shape and size of the Earth better than Columbus. Eratosthenes, a 3rd-Century BC Greek librarian at the Library of Alexandria, not only knew the Earth was round, but calculated its circumference to within 10% of its actual value. No one with half a brain in 1492 thought the Earth was flat.

Another misperception - or perhaps poor choice of words - is that Columbus "discovered" America. He was the first European to make extensive explorations and to bring his findings back to Europe, but let's not give him more credit than he's due. After all, we don't say that Neil Armstrong "discovered" the moon.

Fine, you say. He didn't prove the sphericality of the Earth, and he wasn't the absolute first to discover the Americas. But he was still an intrepid explorer, right? He still did great things for civilization, right?

There's no doubt that he changed the course of world history. But even with so much celebration surrounding Columbus's voyage to the New World, people rarely learn about the wretched things he did once he got there.

On Hispanola, Columbus implemented a program of genocidal slavery: he demanded that each native bring him a certain quantity of gold every week. Those who missed the quota had their hands cut off. Anyone who refused to participate in the program was killed. In two years, Columbus managed the systematic extermination of 250,000 Arawak Indians. Over the next few decades, countless millions would die under the genocidal policies instituted by Columbus and passed on to the other thugs in his family.

Columbus was the first to see the potential for slaves in the native peoples of the Americas; he sent back about 5000 slaves to Spain, setting in motion the transatlantic slave trade that would cause incalculable suffering over the next 350 years. He also encouraged sexual slavery; as James Loewen notes:

"As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, 'A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.'"

Columbus was a rapist, a slavedriver, and a genocidal fiend. And the USA has a holiday named after him, placing him alongside such genuine luminaries as Washington, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King! Can't we give the day to someone who deserves it - like, for instance, the hundreds of thousands of people who were raped, mutilated, killed, or sold off under the supervision of this great historical figure?

Judicious Ignorance

Sarah Palin proves yet again that she would be over her head in even a high school civics class:

Couric: What other Supreme Court decisions [other than Roe v. Wade] do you disagree with?

Palin: Mmmmm. Well... let's see. There's... Of course, in the - the great history of America there have been rulings that there's never going to be absolute consensus by every American, and... there are those issues, like, again, Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there, so you know, going through the history of America, there - there would be others, but um...

Couric: Can you think of any?

Palin: Well, I would think of any, again, that would best be dealt with on a more local level, maybe I would take issue with, but you know, as a mayor, as a governor, and even as a vice president, if I'm so privilaged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things...

Wrong, governor. You would be in a position to change those things. See, as a member of the Executive Branch, you would participate directly in the appointment of new Supreme Court justices. That's kind of a big deal. See the Constitution, Article II, Section 2.

So not only is this woman clueless about the Supreme Court and American legal history, she also still hasn't quite figured out the responsibilites of the office for which she's running.

One thing's for sure, though. She sure is an average American - average, in that she knows nothing about her own government. The problem is she might actually get elected to lead it.