Still on the fence?

Don't be afraid.

Michael Chabon (author of "Kavalier & Clay," "Wonder Boys," etc) wrote this op-ed "Obama vs. the Phobocracy" in today's Washington Post. I think it applies to a lot of the reservations I'm still surprised to hear people say they harbor about voting for Obama, even with abundant evidence to the contrary:

Since I started talking and writing about Obama I have come to see that this ruling fear, and nothing else, lies at the back of every objection or reservation people raise or harbor regarding the man and his candidacy.

Fear whispers to us that white voters have a nasty tendency to tell pollsters, friends and neighbors that they support an African American candidate, then go into the voting booth and let the fear known as racism pull the lever.

Fear tells us that ugliness, rage and brutality are the central facts of human existence, that decency and tolerance are luxuries on whose altar our enemies will be only too happy to sacrifice us.

It is through our fear of falling prey to the calamity and misadventure from which the media promise faithlessly to protect us --a fear manufactured and sold by the media themselves -- that we accept without question the media-borne canard (tainted, in my view, by a racism as insidious as any that hides behind the curtains of voting booths) that Barack Obama, a seasoned and successful 46-year-old husband and father of two, a man sweeping into the prime of his life with all his sails and flags unfurled, is too young and inexperienced for a job that demands vitality and flexibility and that, furthermore, has made nonsense of glittering resumes, laughingstocks of practiced old hands and, in a reverse of Popeye's old trick, ravenous alligators out of years of accumulated baggage.