Years ago, my parents decided to do a "family tree" for my grandparents on the event of their 50th wedding anniversary. Among the things we discovered was at some point, about three generations before my grandfather, most of our ancestors began to have names like Levi, Moses, and Aaron. I wasn't sure what it proved, if anything; five generations is going back awhile, and I've had a hard time identifying with my mother's faith, much less my great-great-great grandfather's. But it sure was groovy fun informing my late granddad, who was somewhere to the right of your average Republican congressman on issues of race and ethnicity, of our research, while also serving to remind the rest of the family that the answer to the question, "where are you from?", is, as for most Americans, likely to be more complex than we may have originally thought.

Now, apparently, it's John Kerry's turn to be eviscerated by the Alpha Girls, this time over whether he has taken too much pride in the fact that a recent geneological investigation of his family turned up a Jewish grandfather. The notion that this is somehow a character flaw strikes me as nothing more than thinly-disguised anti-Semitism, certainly more poisonous than anything likely to be dreamed up by Al Sharpton on the campaign trail, but it seems to be the conventional wisdom in the media. In some respects, it is not dissimilar to the racist glee the far right had for years about rumors of Clinton's black "love child". For a particularly crude anti-Semitic take on this, check out this "investigative story" in the Boston Globe, which seems to be particularly offended that Senator Kerry, actually visited a synagogue in Florida recently. Or this piece, where the writer all but accuses the junior Senator from Massachusetts of being a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty. Since the man is currently the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, we must resign ourselves to the fact that this will be the level of political discourse over the next year and a half.