Andy Martin is the guy who invented the magical story of Barack Obama's secret Muslim upbringing. This story still convinces dumb old people, all the time, when they read it in their emails. Then they ask John McCain about it and he is kind of embarrassed but they still believe it, pretty much. Andy Martin is also an insane racist lunatic who used to run for office a lot. In 1986, he ran for Congress from Connecticut. He sent this amazing letter out to voters. If elected, Martin promised to "exterminate Jew Power in America." Because Jews are "schooled in blood sucking and money grubbing from birth." The letter goes on like that at great length. You can read the whole thing at The Smoking Gun! Oh, and Sean Hannity had this guy on his show to talk about Obama's secret Muslim background. Hannity didn't mention the money-grubbing Jews bit. [TSG]

Sarah Palin scares the Jews! From her crazy Jew-converting church to emails your grandmother is receiving right now, it's clear that America's Jews are nervous about this woman. Just ask Ed Koch! This won't help: remember Palin's address to the Republican National Convention? That bit of speechcraft so inspiring that it is already being taught in schools alongside Dr. King's Dream Speech and Billy Crystal's second Oscars monologue? It turns out one of its few memorable non-Obama-attacking lines was lifted from an old anti-Semite so extreme that he was booted from the John Birch Society. It is, honestly, a bizarre and inexplicable story. "We grow good people in our small towns," Palin said, quoting someone identified only as a writer, "with honesty and sincerity and dignity." That "writer," Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank notes, is a man named Westbrook Pegler. You have probably never heard of him, but he was a very popular and very right-wing columnist from the first half of the 20th century. How right-wing? He openly wished for the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt, for one. And for two, he was quite the anti-Semite! He hated Jews so much, the far-right anti-Semitic John Birch Society banned him from their journal. And all Pegler did was claim that American Jews were "instinctively sympathetic to Communism"! And also claim lots of other crazy stuff! So. Quoting an old anti-Semite is obviously proof of nothing—people still say nice things about Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, and Richard Nixon—but the larger question here is who put those words in her nice speech, where did they find them, and what the hell were they thinking. Like... did they think no one would notice? Who even reads Pegler anymore? Answer: Pat Buchanan! Buchanan, that lovable old coot, used that same line in a 1990 book. Buchanan, of course, did not mind being associated with a crazy old anti-Semite, and the passage was quoted in a section quite complimentary to the reactionary columnist. It really does boggle the mind, doesn't it, that they could not find another passage by another writer talking about how nice small towns are, right? Of course the line is question is also about Harry Truman, who was, of course, a Vice President who eventually became president when the guy before him died in office of old age, so really there are a lot of questions we have for the people who composed that terrible speech. Palin's Source [Ben Smith/Politico]

America's best friends the Saudis are throwing a party in Spain today where they will all celebrate how tolerant they are of other religions or something. So the folks at the Center for Religious Freedom decided to translate some official school textbooks from the Saudi Ministry of Education into English so that we may all shudder at what they teach their children and also maybe kind of laugh, because it honestly reads like a Shouts & Murmers piece. We all know the Jews control the banks, but did you know they also run the nightlife?

The New York Times, ever ranged against the perpetuation of conspiracy theories, hosted a fascinating symposium in May called "Jews and Power." If this is how the Sulzberger clan distances itself against nasty but enduring rumors, then Times, Inc. stockholders might consider now a good time to sell. Bad PR! The event — sort of like the New Yorker Festival, except way more open about who's in charge — borrowed its provocative title from Ruth Wisse's well-regarded intellectual history of the subject, published by Shocken Books a year ago as part of its series of volumes dealing with explicitly Jewish themes. (Also not to be missed: David Mamet on why anti-Semites are limp-dicked liberals who can't close). Some of the conversational pairings were rather inspired: Shalom Auslander, the smashmouth Spinoza of upstate New York, kibitzed with Rebecca Goldstein, author of Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, on what it's like to give up Orthodoxy and any chance of not being hounded to an early grave by your parents. Also, Washington Post journalist Warren Bass, reconstructed lefty Paul Berman, and Mideast analyst Aaron David Miller partake in this fruitful discussion:

When we were young, we assumed "The Hamptons" had something to do with a cartoon pig—now we are older and wiser and we know that it's a place on Long Island where rich people go, even though they can surely afford to go somewhere other than Long Island. Turns out, they're just going there to get away from all the goddamn Jews!

Click to viewIn journalist/blogger Daniel Radosh's upcoming Rapture Ready, he investigates the parallel universe of Christian Pop Culture. It's kinda like regular pop culture, except holier and with slightly worse production values. He says the music's not as bad as you think, but from the looks of this EXCLUSIVE VIDEO, the TV is sublimely ridiculous, if a bit, uh, totally offensive. It's from a TV show called Bibleman, which airs on Trinity Broadcasting Network. In this installment, Bibleman takes on a smarmy talk show host named Sammy Davey, who happens to be an embarrassingly exaggerated Jewish stereotype. Sammy Davey—played by a man in a ridiculous Jewfro wig doing an impression of Martin Short doing an impression of Jerry Lewis—totally ambushes Bibleman, the Christian superhero who apparently doesn't fight evil so much as appear on talk shows to explain why bad things happen to good people. (Hint: because New Yorkers are Jews who don't believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.) The whole thing is basically Randy Newman's "Rednecks" come to life, with Bibleman in the Lester Maddox role. Click through to read an explanatory excerpt from Rapture Ready and to watch the the astounding clip.