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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

How do you fight Mad Love?
Posted by Jill | 6:42 AM
Skippy posted yesterday about the blatant blowjob given to John McCain by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post:

yes, you read it right. mcsame is a much better candidate because...well, because something about he was a pow 40 years ago, and that's something everybody knows...so, he's gotta be a good guy, because he wouldn't get repatrioted in viet nam, so he's obviously a much better man to be president, and obama's flip flops are worse than mclame's on the exact same subject, because we don't know if obama would fold under pressure because he was never a prisoner of war...or something.

got that?

we, probably much like you, were incredulous as we attempted to interpret what cohen was saying.

mcsame has more character? the headline of the piece itself was "mccain's core advantage," obviously a reference to mclame's "core," his ethics, his values.

that's right. the man whose second marriage was to the woman with whom he was cheating on his first wife.


The larger question here is the general free pass given to McCain -- a free pass that Obama will never, ever, ever get, no matter how many barbecued ribs he served journalists (and it's not his nature to do so).

I don't know what we can do in order to get around this love affair that the press has with McCain. It comes from so many places. There's the aspect of entitlement becuase he was a POW -- that we can't touch him because he endured a horrific experience. We see in this suffering meme the kind of hackery perpetrated by Newsweek this week that I wrote about yesterday, in which they try to turn Cindy McCain, heiress to a beer fortune as some kind of long-suffering martyr to a Difficult Life™.

I know it's a third rail, but I think it's important to address this "free pass" thing and the notion in the press that McCain's experience as a POW doesn't mean he should be even MORE scrutinized because he's so clearly damaged by the experience, but that all the faults we see and all the dangerous signs should be swept under the rug because a soldier had a tough time. That these same pundits don't think that a kid growing up in a slum, dodging bullets just to get to school, deserves a similar free pass just shows that while the "reward for adversity" concept is part of the media love for McCain, it isn't all of it. It's Vietnam guilt and father-worship all rolled up into one nauseating package.

I'm not playing the "He signed up for it" card, but when that's the excuse given for the horrific treatment that this government is giving today's soldiers -- treatment McCain excuses and supports, why shouldn't it at least apply to the guy who's going to carry the nuclear suitcase?

We already know how Republicans are given a free pass for marital behavior that would end a Democrat's career. It's clear that probably because the boys in the press are fucking around as much as the politicians are, Republicans get a free pass for adultery. McCain's first wife has, for whatever reason, chosen to be fairly silent -- and this is regarded as consent. And again -- it's because he was a POW. Being a POW excuses everything -- unless it's an ex-POW who lives on the street and panhandles to get food money. If THAT ex-POW should get murdered while sleeping in a doorway, well, he's just another vagrant. But if an ex-POW marries a pretty 25-year-old who's worth a cool hundred mill and builds a political career on her money, well, then he's entitled to anything he wants -- including the ability to blow up the entire fucking world if that's what it takes to make the nightmares go away.

McCain has assiduously courted the press for a long time. The article I cite in the above-linked piece talks about this. This is something I think we need to hammer as hard as we can -- and create a loud drumbeat. This is what pisses me off more than anything else about the alpha dogs who blog creating their fucking Kool Kidz Klub -- They may be deep but they aren't wide, and if you have EVERYONE talking about something, it just MIGHT gain some critical mass. This needs to be a coordinated effort, however loosely, to somehow SHAME the media into paying the fuck attention.

I just flipped on the TV for THIRTY FUCKING SECONDS, and there was Mike Brzezinski reading from MoDo's surprisingly lucid column today and Scarborough dutifully repeating the Lindsey Graham meme that "Obama broke his promise to the American people."

How the fuck do we fight this? Most Americans are idiots. They don't read us; they watch the news, and they STILL thnk that if they see it delivered by a guy in a suit on TV, it's the truth. Even last night on Olbermann, there's Howard Fineman repeating the memes about Obama being elitist to show what bullshit they are, but simply by putting them out there, he's giving them credence.

That closet case Lindsey Graham breaks into crocodile tears on Press the Meat about Obama's "fall":





-- and no one says a word, despite the fact that this is the worst acting we've seen this year outside of The Love Guru.

But this is what most Americans hear. And when the press has its framing of McCain into Mr. Straight Talk, despite the fact that McCain's record is consistently one of doing favors for people who give him money, that's what people believe.

And now, as MoDo notes today, Karl Rove talks about Barack Obama as some kind of country club guy, despite the fact that there are still country clubs where Obama still wouldn't even be allowed to play, and there are actually people who don't find that idea ridiculous.

I wish Americans would stop treating the words that come out of that damn electronic box in the living room as Treatises from God and recognize that what they're seeing is a function of the baggage carried by those delivering the news. When you see someone like Chris Matthews or Karl Rove talking about how Barack Obama is "elitist", you know that what's talking is not the adult you see, but the awkward fat teenage boy with the man-tits, the one stuck in right field because he can't run and can't hit, the one jerking off with a copy of Penthouse in his parents' bathroom while the Bill Clintons and the Barack Obamas get the girls because they are, in the case of Clinton, charming and gregarious; and in the case of Obama, because he's the coolest guy in the room.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...
I cannot believe the way the media I watch is dismissing any story about McCain. Yesterday they were meh about the Charlie Black story (MSNBC is the they I refer to). But they spent a whole segment on what Bill Clinton's spokesperson's email to the Obama campaign meant. WTF?

And what the hell, every morning we have ultraconservatives (versus neocons) like Pat Buchanan on the tube, Joe Scarborough (a conservative) has his own show, etc. but rarely do you see an unapologetic liberal.

I am so sick of it.

Rant over. I'm off to surf for vintage graphics before I start drinking at 9:34a.m.
6/25/08, 9:34 AM  
Blogger J said...
I used to kind of like McCain, back in 2000 when he had this aura of a straight shooter who didn't take any crap from anyone, and didn't play partisan politics.

Then we saw what a coward he truly is, because BushCo trampled him into the ground, told horrid stories about his family, defamed his character, and instead of standing up and calling them on it, he rolled over and asked for more. And he still has that reputation for being a maverick, but really, he's a toad.

And his anger issues scare the hell out of me. And the fact that he can't WAIT to go to war with Iran. Ugh.
6/25/08, 10:52 AM  
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