Michael Chabon–who grew up in Columbia, Md., not far from where I live now–gives Washington Post op-ed columnist Richard Cohen both barrels in the Huffington Post for suggesting that Barack Obama is somehow in league with Louis Farrakhan because the presidential candidate hasn’t publicly condemned the minister of his church for giving an award to the anti-semitic Nation of Islam leader:

Barack Obama knows that black people and Jews need to come together to fight for all the important issues and values they share. He knows that we need to start talking from the center of our communities, and stop whispering or shouting at the extremes. As a Jew whose heritage comprises the bitter memory of racist demagoguery insufficiently denounced by the powerful, would I welcome a stout denunciation of Farrakhan by Obama? Sure I would. But that same great heritage also boasts of the most staunch and fearless struggle against the forces that seek to divide us, to set us against one another, and it’s that side of my heritage that I choose to honor.