"The disgusting machine that is an American political campaign"

When you think of professors, you often think "pretentious" or "pompous" and every now and then "absent-minded." You know, tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbow and all that.

But I remember this one professor I met my second year of grad school who wasn't exactly like that. He had a new book out, which has become a seminal work in its field, and my academic adviser, my friend B., and I drove down to Eugene to hear him speak. Yes, there was a bit of technical language in his lecture, delivered with a slight Chicago accent. That is, except the part where a community member asked him a somewhat hostile question (I can't remember what specifically but I think it had to do with the professor's criticism of Palestinian leadership) and the two descended into a high speed verbal brawl in Arabic ending with a huffing, sarcastic shukran jazeelan -- thank you very much. He then calmly returned to his academic discussion.

Afterward my adviser talked with him a bit about nineteenth-century Palestine and introduced me to him. The professor asked me what my research field was (at the time it was evangelical missionaries in Palestine during the founding of the state of Israel). Suggested a number of resources for my research. Remembered an article that had come out in a recent academic journal about my topic, but couldn't remember the exact details.

"Here's my card. Go ahead and send me an email and I'll send you the details."

Then someone whisked him away as is apt to happen at events like that. But I did email him later that week and got a prompt reply with the article title, author, and journal information.

The professor's name was Rashid Khalidi (pronounced KHAL-i-dee) and until the last week of the election (it's taken me two weeks to write this post), he was mostly someone known just to those of us studying nationalism in the modern Middle East. Though Khalidi is also a bit of a media tart, as A. would call him, as he's often on NPR, Charlie Rose, The Newshour, Nightline, etc. talking about the contemporary situation in Israel/Palestine. And he would know, not just because he is one of the world's preeminent scholars of Arab nationalism and Palestinian history, (not to mention knows a thing or two about Western imperialism in the Middle East) but also because he was an adviser for the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 (but was not a spokesperson for the PLO -- not that the PLO is a bad thing as they are considered the good guys by Washington these days). In addition, he helped found a non-partisan think tank to track Palestinian public opinion and democracy (though it looks like fellow founder Khalil Shikaki is the one doing most of the tracking these days).

Of course, listening to the media, Dr. Khalidi sounded like some crazed, rabid anti-Semite (though note that his parents are from Palestine making him a Semite too). Indeed when A. watched this video of Khalidi on Charlie Rose over at Juan Cole's blog, he was surprised to see a guy who sounded American and looked "Jewish" (my godfather Talal, who is half Jordanian, is often told he looks Jewish, as have a number of Palestinians I know).

McCain's "neo-Nazi" comparison notwithstanding, even when liberals talked about how John McCain was also connected to "this guy," I was disappointed at times when they failed to point out that the issue wasn't that both Obama and McCain were connected to -- and somehow dirtied by -- "this guy" but that neither of them should feel any shame about being connected to Dr. Khalidi. Obama and McCain may disagree with Khalidi regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, but that does not make Khalidi some "radical" to be denounced and disowned as quickly as possible. As Scott Horton wrote in Harper's regarding McCain's funding of Khalidi's democracy project, "McCain and Khalidi appear to have some joint interests, and that fact speaks very well of both of them." Or as Christopher Hitchens (with whom I'm pleased to actually agree for the first time in awhile) stated, "... if Barack Obama was looking for a Palestinian friend, he could not have chosen any better." Exactly. And it was infuriating to watch a man who is both brilliant and kind dragged through the mud in such a way. "I actually find it demeaning, insulting, and depressing to have to defend Rashid," said Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan who is himself Jewish and had just had dinner with Khalidi a few weeks earlier.

Many pointed out that the issue wasn't really that Khalidi is some sort of scary radical but that he is Muslim with a distinctly Arabic name. McCain said that race would not play an issue at the polls, but he clearly wanted and encouraged ethnicity to. And in so doing led a number of his strongest supporters to say that "their hero was losing not only an election but his reputation—or, as one prominent backer put it, 'his soul.'"

A year and a half ago, during a brief improvement while taking Lyrica, I was healthy enough to go hear Dr. Khalidi speak again, this time just up the street from me at Portland State University. Most of his lecture was a denunciation of Palestinian leadership -- both Fatah and Hamas -- as well as Israel's total control of Palestinian life, including in Gaza from which the Israelis have ostensibly withdrawn (and into which they are now depriving the UN from bringing food).

At the conclusion of the lecture, Dr. Khalidi took questions from the audience and one man asked him to comment on whether the Israelis control the mass media and hold the American government hostage, with someone like Mort Zuckerman at US News and World Reports being a prime example, or was it just a case of the media being out to lunch on this issue. Dr. Khalidi had little time for this thinly veiled anti-Semitism.

(I taped the lecture to share with Talal at some point...some day...which is why I can provide such a lengthy quote.)

"I don't think the question is about the mass media. I think the question has to be, if you're a politician, what's in it for you?...Where is a body of voters in the hundreds, or thousands, or millions, who's vote will depend on somebody not voting in favor of Israel? Now there is a bloc of voters, people who will give...tens of millions of dollars, and will deliver district after district, and really deliver...There is simply nothing there on our side of the issue, in terms of political weight in this country.

I mean, I feel really sorry for people who believe there's a great conspiracy. There's no conspiracy. There's votes! And there's money! And there's organization! And on the other side, there are no votes, there's no organization, and there's no money! It's a no-brainer. I mean, a politician would be a moron to put her or his head into the meat grinder of opposing people who have money, organization, and votes.

...And what you said about the press, God knows, I live in New York City. I have the New York Daily News. I have the New York Post. And I have the New York Sun, which is the worst of the lot. Not to speak of the New York Times. And that's what people read in New York City. So I know about the media. I deal with it all the time.

But that is not the core of the problem. The core of the problem is...that people like us don't have a lot of votes. People like us cannot deliver the checks that they need to run the disgusting machine that is an American political campaign. And people like us don't have organization. So when or if we had all those things and there were still some sinister, tenebrous conspiracy pervading, then...we might find that not's enough. But in the absence of all those things, which seem to me to be the obvious answer, we shouldn't need to look very much further...What you've gotta do is play the game...You have to play that game one way or another or else you can't talk about it. I mean, you don't have the right to talk about it unless or until there is that kind of level."

Yes, folks, that's the "radical" "Jew-basher" whose relationship with Barack Obama, the Republicans told us, should scare us all (thankfully it didn't scare 53% of the electorate). Another casualty of yet another "disgusting machine that is an American political campaign."