Like a hole in the head

Watching politics play out from the JTA vantage point is like one of those teasers that make local TV news so notorious: "Boys rampage naked at local middle school! More after the break." And you sit, gut clenched, through a marathon of Billy Mays requiems just to make sure, you know, it’s not your kid’s school. And not your kid.

So it is with each breaking political scandal, controversy, free-for-all. Eric and I stare at CNN. I turn up the volume so I can hear over the grind of our collective teeth: Please, please, please let this not involve anyone Jewish. Remotely Jewish, even. Remotely involve.

So it has been with the "birthers," the regressives who cling romantically to pre-pubescent notions of proof ("If I can’t see your bum it’s not there! Notnotnotnotnot!")

And then, they burst forward in a rush of fantastic humiliation and hubris: Yes, there is a Jewish component. God help us, a major Jewish component.

Here’s the birther in chief, Orly Taitz a) delivering the news of President Obama’s Kenyan "birth" from …. Tel Aviv! b) Getting into an argument with David Shuster over who’s more entitled to invoke the Holocaust! c) Denying a slanging match with an Israeli limo driver! d) And, for the love of all that is good and pure, sounding like the lady at Bank Hapoalim who screams "Lakachta et ha tor sheliiiiiiiiii!!!!!"