Vote for Barack...It's the American Thing to Do

Well, well, well...I must be on a Jewish Minnesotan kick lately...what with the Franken post the other day and now something about Thomas Friedman, the esteemed foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times.

Friedman's column in yesterday's paper gets at something important. Just the fact that a guy with as silly a name as Obama's, with such an Amish quilt background (minus the Amish), really makes this one of those "only in America" stories that chest-thumping patriots like to talk about.

He writes the column from Cairo and asks, rhetorically, whether the keys to power are truly available to all citizens of a country like Egypt.

Of course not.

Just having gotten someone like Barry to become a major party nominee is something that distinguishes us from most of the rest of the world.

Now, his background should in no way be a substitute for preparation for the job and that's not the argument Friedman or I are making. But I will argue that all these America-first rednecks who won't vote for 'that mooslim who goes to a church' because he has a funny name ought to take a step back and look again at what makes this country pretty cool.