Witchcraft and Witch Hunts

I don't get to write this often, but count me with Michelle Malkin: I don't think Christine O'Donnell's confession that she "dabbled into [sic] witchcraft" is all that big a deal. The clip is a decade old, so we're talking, what, high school? It's probably too charitable to say, as Malkin does, that "she tried it. She rejected it. And she learned from it." This imbues a character-building element that I suspect was not present. My guess is that some other, equally vapid trend (Cabbage Patch Kids?) captured her attention and she went off and dabbled into that one.

Now, maybe I'm being defensive. As a mopey adolescent I dabbled in The Cure. But even if O'Donnell's witchcraft becomes an issue, it seems unlikely to hurt her much. Social conservatives love embracing people who have conspicuously renounced their sinful habits, like gay men and women who have been "cured." O'Donnell's example fits the preferred narrative. And it obviously didn't bother the crowd at the Value Voters Summit.