John McCain: Using the POW Excuse Since At Least 1990:
In the dank realms of motherfuckery, from which spring forth the cretinous vermin who populate our current body politic, John McCain occupies a special place. For he is such a devious bag of douche that it's almost impossible to see how much of a motherfucker he is through the oozy coating of righteousness that glazes him. But that sheen is dimming more and more each day, as McCain and Obama learn just how much a lie it is that there's any such thing as a new way to run a political campaign. (Side note: It's the reason that the Rude Pundit hopes Obama picks Biden for VP - that motherfucker's a pit pull who enjoys prancing in the bloody sprinkler left behind after he gets his jaws locked on an opponent's jugular.)
Oh, the shit that will come out in the next few months. For instance, Cindy McCain blamed her husband for her addiction to prescription painkillers back twenty years ago. Why go on when Ms. McCain herself can do it:
"[M]y pain was more than just physical. The Keating Five savings and loan scandal had just blown up, and my husband was implicated. (I became a focus of the investigation when I couldn't find receipts showing that John and I had reimbursed the Keatings for a vacation we took to the Bahamas.) The first time I ever heard of the Keating Five, I was in the hospital, recovering from my first back surgery. A resident came in, threw a newspaper down on my bed and said, 'Gee, I guess your husband's not so perfect after all.' Throughout the investigation, the painkillers cushioned me. The newspaper articles didn't hurt as much, and I didn't hurt as much. I can remember sitting in the Senate hearings, listening to Howell Heflin saying terrible things not just about my husband but about me. The pills made me feel euphoric and free." This is from Newsweek, April 9 2001, so it's not new info, but context is really where all meaning exists, and 2008 is a way different backdrop than 2001.
Of course, McCain's greatest bit of rank whorishness has been the way he and his staff use his time as a POW in 'Nam to brush aside any allegations of being less than impeccably honorable. Seriously, if you have to say about your candidate when he can't remember how many houses he owns, "This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," as McCain spokestooge Brian Rogers did yesterday, then your candidate is fucking worthless.
McCain's been playing that Hanoi Hilton card any time he gets into trouble. Back in the bad old days of the Keating Five, the scandal that dare not be mentioned until the Obama campaign sees the whites of McCain's eyes, McCain and his friends tossed it out there like a pocket ace. According to the Washington Post on November 21, 1990, McCain told Keating he "had not spent 5 1/2 years in a [North Vietnamese] prisoner of war camp to have his courage or integrity questioned," although the logical connection there seems amiss. Earlier, calling on a Senate ethics panel to quickly issue a decision involving McCain's case, supporter Bob Dole said, "He has been held hostage before under very difficult circumstances. So let us not keep him hostage here in the Senate," according to the New York Times on October 23, 1990.
McCain's own people see him as so horribly traumatized by his POW tenure that he can't be asked to bother with things like adhering to ethics guidelines or remembering the number of homes he owns. Since when is PTSD a qualification for president?
