I Love Cynics!

This is my new favorite phrase.

It was uttered by Rashid Khalidi, a professor Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University, and the focus of another smear campaign by McCain and Palin.

When asked about his ties to the PLO (there are likely none) and Obama, he responded:

Khalidi said Wednesday, “I am not speaking to the media at this time, and certainly not until this idiot wind passes.”

Akin to the Ayers attack, McCain and Palin are trying their best, and failing, to bring Obama down based on past, often brief, associations he had in the past.

Khalidi is an outspoken critic of the preferential treatment the United States shows for Israel, and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. For some, including Palin, this is enough to label him an enemy. To quote Palin:

It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years … This is important because his associate, Rashid Khalidi … in addition to being a political ally of Barack Obama, he’s a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization

That’s pretty interesting, considering he wasn’t a spokesperson for the PLO. Khalidi worked for Wafa in the 80’s. Wafa is the news agency for the Palestinian National Authority. By no means does that make him a PLO spokesperson.

It strikes me, now, that the McCain campaign is grasping at any little straw, in the hopes of pulling something off at the last minute. One hopes that after the election, the idiot wind will, indeed, pass.