If there are six days until the election, it must be time for a ginned-up phony controversy.  The phony controversy derives from the story about the L.A. Times‘ Khalidi tape combined with the confident foreign policy pronouncements of Joe the Plumber Geopolitical Strategist that voting for Obama is voting for the “death of Israel.”  These are not necessarily directly related, but it seems likely that the latter’s claim about Obama has some connection to the Khalidi tape or to other reports about Obama’s alleged sympathies with Palestinians.  There is presumably also some connection to Obama’s proposal to hold negotiations with the Iranian government, which is at least a position that Obama actually holds and affirms in public. 

For those of you who have wisely been ignoring the final days of the campaign, here is the story about the tape: back in 2003 when Khalidi was about to leave Chicago to fill Edward Said’s post at Columbia after Said had passed on, there was a farewell party attended by Obama, and there was a video record of it that was leaked to the L.A. Times that the newspaper first reported on in April.  This party and Obama’s attendance at it have been more or less common knowledge to anyone who has spent much time following Obama’s career, and the party and the relationship between Obama and Khalidi have been made out to be meaningful evidence that Obama harbors some pro-Palestinian attitudes because of things he said at this party about Khalidi.  Pro-Palestinian activists and advocates for “even-handed” U.S. policy ardently hope this is the case, and hawkish “pro-Israel” people desperately fear that this is true, or at least they are willing to pretend that they think it is true if it helps to defeat Obama, whom they may dislike for various other reasons.  Now some are claiming that the tape purportedly has a record of Obama saying things not just about Khalidi, but about Israel and Palestine as well, but as far as I can tell this is just more baseless rumormongering. 

It seems that the only reason why anyone suspects that there is something “damaging” (i.e., something not reflexively “pro-Israel”) on the tape is that the Times won’t release it because of an agreement it made with its source(s), but if the Times were to break its agreement with the source(s) and release the tape it would then presumably be accused of violating ethical standards in order to vindicate its preferred candidate.  This is a very odd case of a newspaper being accused of “suppressing” evidence after having published a report on the very thing it is supposedly suppressing.  Had it acquired the tape and never reported on it, that would be one thing, but it did just the opposite.  What is most bizarre about all of this is that from everything we do know about what Obama said, his remarks about Khalidi clearly implied that he didn’t agree with his colleague, which is why in classic Obama fashion he applauded Khalidi for challenging him and making him face his own biases.  Presumably, if the Times had always been trying to follow the directive, “do and say nothing that hurts Obama,” it would never have reported on statements made at the party by other attendees.  As it is, these other statements don’t count for much, and they have nothing to do with Obama’s views on Israel and Palestine.  Perhaps Joe the Plumber can return to worrying about incipient socialism and leave foreign policy to others. 

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