One of the best:

[Thanks to NYCtoGoa.]

Dexter Hill at Editor & Publisher:

The Obama campaign leads by better than 2-1 in newspaper endorsements from dailies and weeklies, based on our tally so far. But the Democratic ticket has an even more impressive lead when it comes to college newspapers — 63 to 1, according to UWIRE’s Presidential Endorsement Scorecard (we have been providing a partial tabulation).

Here is the latest count.

For more on the media and the campaign go to our new blog:

The E&P Pub

JOHN McCAIN (1)
Daily Mississippian, U. Mississippi

BARACK OBAMA (63)
The Amherst Student, Amherst College
The Optimist, Abilene Christian U.
The Bates Student, Bates College
The Justice, Brandeis University
The Orient, Bowdoin College
The Orion, California State U.-Chico
Central Michigan Life, Central Michigan U.
The Flat Hat, College of William and Mary
Columbia Daily Spectator, Columbia U.
Cornell Daily Sun, Cornell U.
The Davidsonian, Davidson College
The Chronicle, Duke U.
Daily Eastern News, Eastern Illinois U.
The Et Cetera, Eastfield College
The Berkeley Beacon, Emerson College
El Vaquero, Glendale Community College
The Crimson, Harvard University
Indiana Daily Student, Indiana U.
Iowa State Daily, Iowa State U.
Daily Kent Stater, Kent State U.
The Parthenon, Marshall U.
The Tech, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Miami Student, Miami U.
The State News, Michigan State U.
The Middlebury Campus, Middlebury College
Northern Star, Northern Illinois U.
Daily Northwestern, Northwestern U.
The Post, Ohio U.
The University News, Saint Louis U.
The Point News, St. Mary’s College
The Rocket, Slippery Rock U.
The Daily Campus, Southern Methodist U.
The Reporter, Stetson University
Pipe Dream, SUNY-Binghamton
The Lamron, SUNY-Geneseo
The Phoenix, Swarthmore College
Tufts Daily, Tufts U.
Arizona Daily Wildcat, U. Arizona
Daily Californian, UC-Berkeley
New University, UC-Irvine
Daily Bruin, UCLA
The Daily Nexus, UC-Santa Barbara
Central Florida Future, U. Central Florida
Daily Illini, U. Illinois
University Daily Kansan, U. Kansas
The Louisville Cardinal, U. Louisville
The Michigan Daily, U. Michigan
The Michigan Journal, U. Michigan-Dearborn
Minnesota Daily, U. Minnesota
The Maneater, U. Missouri
Oklahoma Daily, U. Oklahoma
The Daily Pennsylvanian. U. Pennsylvania
The Pitt News. U. Pittsburgh
The Daily Gamecock, U. South Carolina
Badger Herald, U. Wisconsin
The Daily Cardinal, U. Wisconsin
Advance-Titan, U. Wisconsin-Oshkosh
The Pacer, U. Tennessee-Martin
Daily Texan. U. Texas
The Independent Collegian, U. Toledo
Daily Evergreen, Washington State U.
The Voice, Washtenaw Community College
The Daily Athenaeum, West Virginia U.

Jason Linkins at The Huffington Post:

Oh, dear. Michael Goldfarb, who’s clearly better off blogging about ABBA and criticizing people for playing Dungeons and Dragons, just pooped his pants on national television. The McCain campaign is making a last ditch effort to make SCARY MUSLIM NOISES at Barack Obama, and since Goldfarb doesn’t have any sort of reputation worth salvaging, it figures that he’d be doing duty here.

But CNN’s Rick Sanchez calls Goldfarb out for the hypocrisy of hyping a sinister connection between Obama and a guy that McCain funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to, and from there, Goldfarb goes right off the rails, refusing to answer Sanchez’s questions with anything other than intimations. Repeatedly asked to name a second anti-Semite that Obama allegedly “pals around with,” Goldfarb does nothing but issue hollow, Page Six-style intimations.

What a gutless wonder. And here I’d been led to believe that this campaign took its cues from some kind of war hero.

///

I’m Climbing You
Erica Jong
…………………………………

I want to understand the steep thing

that climbs ladders in your throat.

I can’t make sense of you.

Everywhere I look you’re there–

a vast landmark, a volcano

poking its head through the clouds,

Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput.
…………………………………

I climb into your eyes, looking.

The pupils are black painted stage flats.

They can be pulled down like window shades.

I switch on a light in your iris.

Your brain ticks like a bomb.
…………………………………

In your offhand, mocking way

you’ve invited me into your chest.

Inside: the blur that poses as your heart.

I’m supposed to go in with a torch

or maybe hot water bottles

& defrost it by hand

as one defrosts an old refrigerator.

It will shudder & sigh

(the icebox to the insomniac).
…………………………………

Oh there’s nothing like love between us.

You’re the mountain, I am climbing you.

If I fall, you won’t be all to blame,

but you’ll wait years maybe
for the next doomed expedition.
///

Stefany Anne Golberg in The Wonderful World of Stefany Anne Golberg:

A response to Morgan Meis’ ‘Idolotry’ (The Smart Set, February 2008)

People in the United States sure seem excited about voting these days. This excitement has even led to some pontifications about a renewed collective enthusiasm, a bolstered civic pride, even an actual increase in voter participation. A recent conversation about the matter with a group of acquaintances led to a discussion about, naturally, American Idol. A married couple was marveling at the enthusiasm with which their not-yet-legal-voting-age teenage child and her friends voted for American Idol contestants, at the investment they had in the show’s performers and, indeed, the whole voting process. They felt as though they were participants, and that by watching American Idol and voting for their favorite contestants, they were included in a larger community of spectators who, in acting together as a community, became co-authors of their own entertainment.

Before recorded technology allowed time-based arts to be at the complete control of the producer, performance was often just a crapshoot. You had your concept, your score, your well-rehearsed cast, but once presented in a live setting, you also had an ingredient that was not necessarily part of the script: your audience.

More here.  Also, Stefany reminds us: Yes On Prop 2!  Do check it out.

From Science:

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin received a media lashing last week when word trickled out that her makeup artist snagged $22,800 in the first half of October. Pundits warned that such royal treatment might undermine her “down home” persona, but the makeover may have been a savvy move: New research adds more weight to the idea that voters value attractiveness more than competence in the faces of female politicians. The idea that candidates can win or lose votes on the basis of looks is not new. A previous study of U.S. Senate and House of Representative elections showed that candidates whose faces were judged “more competent” than their opponents’ won the elections between 66% and 74% of the time. But that study did not consider the impact of the candidate’s gender on the relative importance of appearances, says Joan Chiao, a social neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois.

Chiao and her colleagues decided to investigate the role of gender. They compiled headshots of 46 women and 60 men who in 2006 ran for seats in the House of Representatives. The photos were grayscaled to minimize the effect of hair and clothing color, and highly recognizable candidates, such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, were not included. A group of 73 test subjects, 38 of them women, viewed each face for 1 second and then noted how attractive, how competent, how dominant, or how approachable they found the candidates. Then, they viewed pairs of candidates from the 106-member set and had to indicate for which candidate they would vote in a hypothetical presidential election.

Male and female voters tended to like the same traits. Perceived competence predicted wins by both male and female candidates. But for female candidates, attractiveness was an even more important predictor of success. Good looks were not a significant factor for men, the researchers report this week in PLoS ONE. The biggest difference between male and female voters was in how much they valued approachability. For male candidates, perceived approachability had a significant impact on how likely female but not male voters were to cast ballots in their favor. Chiao says the results indicate that the “halo effect,” the idea that prettier people may be judged as more capable or having other positive traits, only applies to female politicians: “It reveals a gender bias and the importance of attractiveness for female candidates to succeed in elections.”

More here.

From The New York Times:

McCain and Obama are so different in so many ways, but they do share one thing: a kind of tragic sensibility. Judging from the books they cite as most important, they embrace hope but recognize the reality that life is unlikely to conform to our wishes. They mention Shakespeare’s tragedies, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and David Halberstam’s “Best and the Brightest.” Like Robert Jordan, they want to make things better and are willing to put themselves in the arena, but they know that nothing is perfectible and that progress is provisional. Things fall apart; plans fail; planes are shot out of the sky. Their attraction to Hemingway suggests a willingness to acknowledge unpleasant facts not always found in those who enter elective politics.

When I asked him by e-mail to send a list of books and writers that were most significant to him, Obama offered American standards: The Federalist, Jefferson, Emerson, Lincoln, Twain, W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Souls of Black Folk,” King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon.” Among writers from abroad, he singles out Graham Greene (“The Power and the Glory” and “The Quiet American”), Doris Lessing (“The Golden Notebook”), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Cancer Ward” and Gandhi’s auto­biography. In theology and philosophy Obama mentioned Nietzsche, Niebuhr and Tillich — writers consistent with his acknowledgment that while life is bleak, it is not hopeless.

More here.

[Thanks to Shiko.]

[Thanks to Mark Blyth. Again.]

[Thanks to Mark Blyth.]

[Thanks to mjp.]

Via Sean Carroll, Nature (yes, Nature!) endorses Obama (via Sean Carroll):

[S]cience is bound by, and committed to, a set of normative values — values that have application to political questions. Placing a disinterested view of the world as it is ahead of our views of how it should be; recognizing that ideas should be tested in as systematic a way as possible; appreciating that there are experts whose views and criticisms need to be taken seriously: these are all attributes of good science that can be usefully applied when making decisions about the world of which science is but a part. Writ larger, the core values of science are those of open debate within a free society that have come down to us from the Enlightenment in many forms, not the least of which is the constitution of the United States.

On a range of topics, science included, Obama has surrounded himself with a wider and more able cadre of advisers than McCain. This is not a panacea. Some of the policies Obama supports — continued subsidies for corn ethanol, for example — seem misguided. The advice of experts is all the more valuable when it is diverse: ‘groupthink’ is a problem in any job. Obama seems to understands this. He tends to seek a range of opinions and analyses to ensure that his own opinion, when reached, has been well considered and exposed to alternatives. He also exhibits pragmatism — for example in his proposals for health-care reform — that suggests a keen sense for the tests reality can bring to bear on policy.

Ezra Klein has a good suggestion:

Okay, one more quick Khalidi comment. Over at the Motherblog, Tim Fernholz analyzes the controversy and concludes, “no one knows who Khalidi is outside of the media and high information voters, and an even smaller universe of people cares. The attacks by McCain are reprehensible…but ultimately this is not an election about small stuff. This is a big stuff election.” If you want a one-line summary of why John McCain’s Distract-O-Tron 3000 strategy has failed to connect, you can’t do much better than that.

Meanwhile, Khalidi is, as everyone keeps telling you, a well-respected and incisive scholar of the Middle East in general, and the Palestinian struggle for nationhood in particular…

Presumably, this experience has not been a pleasant one for Khalidi. But it would be nice if some good emerged from it in the form of broader familiarity with his important works. So next time you hear Hannity explain how Rashid Khalidi urinates on a Haggadah during full moons, head over to Amazon and pick up a copy of The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Its an important book on its own terms, and its purchase is a worthy counter-statement to this type of anti-Arab fearmongering.

And, as Henry Farrell suggests, if you prefer a unionized book seller, you can buy it here at Powell’s.

Thanks, Robin! 😉

Scott Stiffler in Edge (Miami):

One of the largely unasked questions of the election is how the turnout by African Americans in California will affect Proposition 8. Will increased numbers of African American voters who arrive at California polls in support of Barack Obama play a decisive role in eliminating the state’s recent same sex marriage advances?

Several veteran human rights activists are working hard within the community to convince African Americans that defeating Proposition 8 is part of the logical continuation of gains made in the civil rights era and beyond.

Their work serves a s a rebuttal to a contentious New York Times article that speculated, “Black voters, enthused by Mr. Obama’s candidacy but traditionally conservative on issues involving homosexuality, could pour into voting stations in record numbers to punch the Obama ticket – and then cast a vote for Proposition 8.”

Proposition 8, a result of last year’s state Supreme Court decision allowing for same sex marriage, asks voters to decide, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California.” As each side spends millions to bend the hearts and minds of voters to their side, the latest polls from this past weekend show a statistical dead heat after adjustments are made for the margin of error. The first poll, sponsored by No on 8 and conducted by Lake Research, shows 47 percent in favor and 43 percent opposed. A Survey USA poll shows 47 percent in favor and 42 percent opposed.

But is the link between conservative voting patterns and skepticism among African Americans towards gay rights legitimate, or is it just another attempt to box a diverse population into a convenient label?

In Egypt Today, a profile of the new provost of the American University in Cairo:

After 20 years at Columbia, the move to Cairo and AUC is a big shift for Anderson, whose name became publicly associated with the Middle East when she invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the Columbia World Leaders Forum in 2006. The controversial invitation — heavily criticized in the US and later rescinded by the university because of “security concerns” — illustrates Anderson’s forthright personality as a leader who is not afraid of challenges.

Anderson’s relationship with Egypt began approximately 30 years ago when she was a student at AUC’s Center for Arabic Study Abroad.

“The current state of my Arabic does not reflect well on the program,” she laughs, “but I had a really wonderful time. It was just one of those experiences that begins to change what you aspire to do. I ended up being a political scientist who works a lot in the Middle East.”

In September 2007, Anderson was appointed to AUC’s Board of Trustees along with Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and former US Assistant Secretary of State Dina Habib Powell.

“All along, I had been following AUC’s ambitious fundraising efforts for the new campus. I remember coming to Cairo last February and walking around the new campus for the first time. I thought it was just breathtaking. So when I was given the opportunity to come out and put the intellectual and academic meat on the bones of this campus, it was just too irresistible to pass up,” says Anderson. “The fact that AUC is undergoing this dramatic transformation was very much a part of the appeal for me.”

This is the 13th presidential campaign I have followed, as a teenager and as an adult, and the only previous campaign that generated anything like the same passion and enthusiasm was the first of those: John Kennedy’s in 1960. For many people, including myself, the excitement of this campaign is the prospect of an African-American president who could change the direction of his country, and perhaps the world, after the barren Bush years.

However, we should not allow excitement to mask reality. The Obama-McCain contest has generated a number of myths about America’s electorate – and it has also generated the polling evidence to extinguish those myths. What is that evidence? And how far can we trust the polls that tell us that Obama is heading for an emphatic victory?

more from The New Statesman here.

The enormous growth of the financial sector is one of the wonders of our age. In the 1960s the business of banking, broking and insuring accounted for just 10 per cent of total corporate profits in most developed economies. By 2005, this proportion had swelled to nearly 35 per cent in the US and roughly the same in Britain—the two countries that host the world’s largest financial centres. Last year a staggering one in five Britons earned their living in finance.

Of course, the profitability of the financial sector is declining on account of the credit crisis. But the politicians and financial authorities have felt obliged to plug the holes that have appeared in a deflating system with vast public support, and now even direct capital injections. Finance is now not only big, but worryingly unstable. Moreover, embedded in this growth is a mystery. Whereas companies such as Microsoft and Google have risen by devising products that have added to the productive capacity of the economy, finance provides no such final good or product. It is a utilitarian mechanism for bringing together savers and borrowers, and this has not changed markedly since the 1960s (although, as we shall see it has become considerably more complex). So what explains its relentless expansion?

more from Prospect Magazine here.

A year ago, no one here would have predicted that a black candidate would become the nominee of a major party and have a more than realistic chance of winning the White House on 4 November. And it’s a testament to Obama’s considerable skill that he has largely managed to make his race an afterthought. America is on the verge of something historic and it almost seems anticlimactic.

But black Americans are still pinching themselves, still not quite able to believe what has been achieved. And all Americans should pause from the heated political rhetoric and reflect on the sense of accomplishment, win or lose, that his candidacy represents – an affirmation of that American ideal.

I think back to my father, who suffered terrible racism in the south, still believing for his son: ‘You can be anything you want to be.’ That means any little boy can even dream of being President. And that really is only in America.

more from The Guardian here.