Even if you're not a fan of Bruce Springsteen or Paul McCartney — really, though? You should have that checked out — you can appreciate the massive insult here.

The Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson had a clever cover story last week on Barack Obama's hometown of Hyde Park, Chicago, a neighborhood that functions almost entirely as the extended campus of the University of Chicago, where both Obamas once drew salaries. As a zip code, it's where black meets white (just dust off Allan Bloom's old social calendar) and sixties radicalism meets free-market conservatism (Bill Ayers wanders past the Milton Friedman Institute on his way to teach kids about the coming end of the bourgeoisie). However, the reputation for right-wingery, says Ferguson, is greatly exaggerated: "Of the tens of thousands of faculty who have taught at the University of Chicago over the past half-century, perhaps as many as 65 have, at some point in their lives, voted for a Republican." Is this just part of the new GOP strategy to scandalize Obama by refashioning the hothouse of conservative academia as "Berkeley with snow"? (The Google trend chart for "Hyde Park" shows no real change in searchability, so most of America isn't hip to the Democratic nominee's controversial hood yet. Also, press mentions of the locale don't seem to be spiking.) What's the Matter with Kansas? author Thomas Frank smells a rat: