McCain apparently knows and obviously cares nothing about Khalidi's actual record. His attack is a reminder of just how, you might say, viciously parochial he and his people are. McCain doesn't know who Khalidi is, doesn't know his work. McCain doesn't actually know much period, I think, outside the paleo-hawk/neo-con national security bubble that claims his true interest. And he totally doesn't care. He just knows that Khalidi has a Middle-Eastern name, and can be linked, inaccurately, to the PLO. Khalidi is just a plausible stooge for a racist smear campaign. To help McCain get what he wants. 

It's all an especially chilling reminder that McCain really is nothing more than a thuggish, largely uninformed, completely unprincipled hack-- every bit as violently opportunist and exploitive as George W. Bush. And strikingly, with a very similar sense of power hungry entitlement, both to run over anybody between him and the Presidency, and to transparently treat voters as just so many buttons to push to gain power.

What a contemptible, dangerous man!