Right, Left and Idiotic

Both Barack Obama and John McCain have vowed to run what they call a "civil campaign." Will it work? Who knows. But even if the two nominees do keep it above the belt, don't expect their allies on the extreme right and left to stop the low blows anytime soon.

Take today, for example. When Obama gave his wife Michelle a loving little fist pound on the St. Paul stage last Tuesday, reporters couldn't help but characterize it as a symbol of generational change. Still, as our friends at Slate's Trailhead blog first noted, their formal, AP Stylebook-friendly descriptions of the gesture--"closed-fisted high-five," "celebratory fist-bump," "knuckle bump" and, best of all, "fist to fist thumbs up"--left something to be desired. Thankfully, FOX News's E.D. Hill has finally come to the rescue. In a segment this afternoon dedicated exclusively to the Obamas' much-buzzed-about maneuver, which she calls "some interesting body communication," Hill reports that we may have actually witnessed--wait for it--a "terrorist fist jab." Watch it and weep:

Right. Because Ayman al Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden have spent the last seven years dapping it up in the caves of Waziristan--all while America's pro athletes expressed their undying allegiance to radical jihad every time they scored a touchdown or sunk a three-pointer. Monday Night Football will never be the same.

Of course, the right is not alone in its abject idiocy. In an item posted yesterday on his Americablog, John Aravosis questioned whether McCain should receive a military pension for the injuries he sustained in Vietnam, responding, as the Politico's Jonathan Martin notes, to an aide's explanation--that the former POW was "tortured for his country"--with this snippet of brilliant analysis: "Yeah, we get it. The torture card. It's to McCain what 9/11 was to Giuliani's candidacy--the never-ending name-drop... Imagine had the Democratic candidate served in Vietnam, been captured, and then made propaganda videos for the enemy while claiming all the while to be a hero." Makes sense, no? McCain crashes his A-4E Skyhawk near Hanoi, breaks a bunch of his own bones, refuses to let his Vietnamese captors treat his injuries, requests to be stabbed with a bayonet and insists on weekly beatings for five-and-a-half years--all so he can "name-drop" the experience when running for office a few decades later. And then--and then!--he has the gall to receive the same disability payments as every other wounded veteran? Disgusting.

Here's to five more months of civility...