Michael Chabon over the weekend had an op-ed piece in the New York Times weighing in on the Jewish reaction to the “blockheadedness” of Israel’s raid of the Gaza-bound flotilla last week.

“If Israel was, as the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann put it, to “become as Jewish as England is English and America is American,” then, like England and America and every other modern polity, Israel must slog along through history, purblind and panicky, from its founding to its ultimate fate, prey at every moment to — and, God willing, on guard against — its rich, inglorious human heritage of blockheadedness,” Chabon wrote.

The full piece can be found here.

Ever since new broke last Friday about the murder of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, Ayelet Waldman has been actively speaking out on why she supports abortion.

A string of e-mails sent to her listserv of friends and fans have asked for donations to the National Abortion Federation and Medical Students for Choice or pushed readers in the Bay Area attend a vigil in Tiller’s honor. She also pubilished a piece in the Huffington Post on her own experience with abortion.

“The schlock jocks have a permanent bully pulpit from which to incite violence and hatred,” Waldman wrote. “But what about the women whose stories are never told? What about the women who confess only in secret their tragic tales of babies with genetic and developmental abnormalities, who turn to each other to heal because to say the words out loud is too dangerous?”

Waldman is now, via Salon, having a discussion with New York Times columnist Elizabeth Weil on having a late-term abortion. It’s available here.

Looks like Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman had much more fun at the inauguration than my post Wednesday suggested. Take a look at the missive Waldman e-mailed 5,000 people yesterday, and later posted online by Gawker with a little teasing.

After raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for President Obama’s campaign last year, Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon hit Washington, D.C. this week to party and watch the inauguration parade.

The couple had a busy weekend. Chabon was expected on Saturday to attend a performance by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble hosted by The New Republic, The New York Times reports. Then on Monday, Chabon participated in a reading of the Constitution at the Newseum on Monday, according to The Legal Times. Later, the two were expected to attend a $500-a-person dinner that Waldman helped organize called “Art.Food.Hope.” (The dinner, which featured famous chefs, helped raise fund for the D.C. Central Kitchen.)

And Tuesday, the big day? Chabon, Waldman, and their four children watched the parade. After several hours in the cold, though, Waldman told The San Francisco Chronicle that her kids began to get white and shake, and “we were ushered from the parade site by the Secret Service.” Luckily, their son Zeke “shared a glance with the new president,” Waldman said.

(Side note: When did Waldman and Chabon break the $200,000 mark for Obama? Wow.)

Miss all of Michael Chabon’s election writings? Fear not! Chabon’s Web site, dormant for months, now collects all of them, from Obama campaign e-mails to op-eds. Check it out!