Just when you thought the McCain backers couldn’t get any more disgusting, we see this:

During the October 30 broadcast of his Cincinnati-based radio show, Bill Cunningham asked "Randy Furman," a fictional Jewish character voiced by fellow WLW-AM host Scott Sloan: "Did you hear about this [Columbia University professor of Middle East studies Rashid] Khalidi tape where [Sen. Barack] Obama is toasting a guy who wants to gas and fry Jews? … This Obama guy loves the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization]. Can’t you figure that out?"

Cunningham later added, "Jews for [Sen. John] McCain because Obama wants to gas the Jews, like the PLO wants to gas the Jews, like the Nazis gassed the Jews. You got Obama introducing Arab terrorists, and the L.A. Times won’t release the story."

I’m astonished that these gents aren’t attacking the hard-right and McCain-backing Jerusalem Post for daring to point to a story in the Huffington Post about McCain’s heading the International Republican Institute when it gave grants to an organization co-chaired by Professor Khalidi (who, by the way, is a respected academic – Juan Cole lists his books — and not the evil demon the righties make him to be). But I digress.

This is all part of the ongoing effort by various conservatives to tar Obama as an anti-Semite. (Considering that the vast majority of anti-Semites are arch-conservatives like Pat Buchanan, this sends the dials spinning on the ol’ Irony Meter.) As Dick Cavett said:

A recently discovered addition to the list of semi-desirables whose departure from the scene won’t be hard to take is someone called Michael Goldfarb, identified at the bottom of the screen as the latest "McCain spokesman." Talking to CNN’s Rick Sanchez, the just-a-touch-goonish Mr. Goldfarb asserted that Obama hangs out with many undesirables, including those who are, in his rendering of the word, "anti-SeMETic."

Repeatedly challenged by Sanchez to name just one such, he proved unable. He kept repeating, "We all know who that is." I didn’t.

Shame on Dick Cavett, asking a Republican to provide genuine evidence for a smear! Horrors!