Rails - Aug 2006 - Checking element presence in RJS

I need to test whether an element exists before I do some RJS thing to 
it.  I currently have a small RJS snippet that looks like this:

  page << "if $(''foo'') {"
  page[''foo''].visual_effect :appear
  page << "}"

This would make sense:

  if page[''foo'']
    page[''foo''].visual_effect :appear
  end

But since that is executed as ruby the javascript "if" is not
rendered.

Is there prettier, pure ruby, and better way to say this with RJS?

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