Friday morning links!

* Daddy, where do lies come from? The New York Times reports. Via Steve Benen.

* Never forget: xkcd remembers Oregon.

* Overthinking It on the transdimensionality of Fraggles.

* Conversing with Marginalised People for Dummies. (via MeFi)

* And Amanda Marcotte celebrates Mad Men and its interrogation of the consumerist origins of the American sense of self.

On Mad Men, the ad executives believe that they possess the power of illusion. In the series pilot, Don woos a client and potential lover by replying, when she states that she believes in love, "What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons." Let's hope Mad Men continues its brave path and goes into season three exploring the possibility that the '60s youth culture was also created by ad executives looking to sell coffee and miniskirts.

A little bit of politics.

* Yesterday's Tina Fey/Sarah Palin skit was another instant classic. It's no exaggeration to say that Tina Fey may have single-handedly saved America from a Sarah Palin presidency, and for that she deserves our deepest thanks.



* As for what Gwen Ifill thought of the debate she (poorly) moderated, on Meet the Press this morning she seemed a little miffed that Palin "blew [her] off."

* For better or for worse Obama has decided that the Keating Five scandal is now fair game. I say "or for worse" only because it's not clear to me that aggressive negative campaign is still necessary anymore; the Ayers smear to which it is a response is very old news, and there's strong evidence that McCain has permanently damaged his own brand through his lying and smearing. There's also good reason to think McCain is already beat, which makes me wonder whether it's worth it at this point to climb back down to McCain's level and potentially damage the Obama brand as a consequence.

* Open Left also has a post on realignment elections with some nice very nice historical maps.

* And Nicholas Kristof tackles privilege in the time.

One of the fallacies this election season is that if Barack Obama is paying an electoral price for his skin tone, it must be because of racists.

On the contrary, the evidence is that Senator Obama is facing what scholars have dubbed “racism without racists.”