Time Magazine's Odd Choices

At http://time.comTime magazine, I worked briefly with a fellow named Tony Karon who, at least when I was there, worked for the website. I'm plowing through Facebook last night where we're friends, and I saw a link to this piece on his website As best I can tell, the piece argues that Israel isn't really essential to Jewish life, that Hillary Clinton is a "racist" towards the Palestinians which is why the "Zionists" support her, that the author "loves" Obama and that the Illinois Senator has a position on Israel that is substanitally different than Clinton's (news to me) and that, Obama's denials aside, he may well come out of a Muslim tradition that makes him right for the times or so says a South African cleric quoted in the blog. Among the gems: "The problem with Obama, for the Zionist establishment, is that he may not muster the degree of racist contempt for the Palestinians that they can safely expect from Hillary Clinton." The piece is very pro Obama but in a way that the Republican party would love to quote.

My wife makes TV ads for Hillary Clinton so take what I say with a chunk o' salt, but I think this election is driving normal people around the bend in ways that, I think, are bizarre given the miniscule policy differences--pace, Krugman--between Clinton and Obama.

Let's leave Karon's personal, provocative blog aside. It goes by the name "Rootless Cosmopolitan" which was an Stalinist insult hurled at Jews, like myself, in the last century but which Karon, a South African and a Jew who prides himself on his multiculturalism, has whimsically appropriated and wears proudly.

Let's look at Time, my alma mater which supported me through the CIA leak case. Time chose this week to do a cover story arguing that experience shouldn't matter when picking a president. Fair enough, I suppose. I wrote a not dissimilar piece about Mitt Romney arguing that private sector experience didn't seem to make for a good economic record under a president. (Mining Executive Herbert Hoover, Agribusinessman Jimmy Carter, etc). Still, I'm not sure I'd run this on the eve of a crucial pair of primaries. The editor of Time, my friend Rick Stengel, has recently weighed in to argue that newspapers shouldn't endorse candidates because it will fuel the suspicions of a public that already distrusts the media. Let's leave aside whether newspapers should abandon a centuries-old tradition to mollify the irritable. But there's Stengel, who has wisely encouraged his writers to argue sides instead of hewing to a bland neutrality, writing a couple of weeks ago about the minutiae of superdelegate rules--in Obama's favor, making the case that Democratic superdelegates, who are free to vote how they'd like, should rubberstamp the will of the primary voters even if, I suppose, those voters include independents and Republicans who inserted themselves into the Democratic primary. I'm not saying Time is pro-Obama. It's not. I think it's odd when Time staffers say they "love" Obama, when the editor inveighs against endorsements but puts his imprimatur behind the intraparty rules that would all but guarantee one nominee. I think people are writing things that are less circumspect than they would have written in other years when passions weren't running as high. Am I wrong?