One of the things we admire about the so-called Greatest Generation is that its members didn’t whine and bitch about their experiences. There was a fascist, would-be world dictator seeking to impose his totalitarian will on the world, invading countries left and right, and they had to stop him. So, they got on a boat, or a plane, went to Europe and the Pacific, and kicked ass. Then they came home and got back to work, living their lives, overcoming wartime injuries and trauma because that was simply how you did it.
When you have every right to bitch and complain, but you don’t, you have a little thing called strength of character. And compared to today’s generation, for which a malfunctioning iPhone is pretty much the end of the entire known universe, that attitude is kind of cool.
Unfortunately, John McCain hasn’t been exhibiting any of that lately. Instead, he’s trying to shamelessly use his POW experience to defend himself against things that have not a damn thing to do with being a POW. And it’s not only getting old, it’s getting embarrassing.
A caveat here: We at Various Things & Stuff have never served in any branch of the military, never fired a shot in anger nor heard one fired at us, never learned to fly a combat airplane off a carrier into hostile enemy territory, never had to face the fear of capture by an enemy and years of torture at their hands. We get to sit in a semi-comfortable office and type things on our keyboard because other people did that for us, and for that, those people (including McCain) have our gratitude.
On the other hand, we don’t believe it is necessary for us to have done any of that in order to be able to say this: McCain can’t use his wartime capture as a dodge. And he’s trying to do just that.
We once heard McCain — at Cashman Field, in fact — compare himself to then-Congressman Jim Gibbons by joking that the difference between them was Gibbons managed to not get shot down when flying over hostile territory during the Vietnam War. Dude had a sense of humor about it, one that was pretty endearing. But that was a long time ago, and McCain has certainly changed. (Oh, and we should note that McCain and Gibbons are actually more similar than McCain would like to admit, but that’s another post for another day.)
Now, having failed to recall how many houses his family owns, McCain is going around yelling “But I was a POW! I was a POW!” to change the subject. Exaggeration? Not by much. Check out what he told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show last night when the house issue arose:
Could I just mention to you, Jay, that in a moment of seriousness, I spent five-and-a-half years in a prison cell. I didn’t have a house, I didn’t have a kitchen table, I didn’t have a table, I didn’t have a chair. I spent those five-and-a-half years not because I wanted to get a house when I got back home.
In fact, McCain spent those five-and-a-half years in a prison cell because some North Vietnamese gunner was better at firing triple-A than McCain was at dodging it. But that’s not important here. What’s important here is this: What the fuck does McCain spending those five-plus years as a POW have to do with how many houses he and his wealthy second wife own in 2008? What is the possible nexus of one to the other?
Answer: Nothing, and none. To even bring it up is to try to use his thus-far honorable service to the country as a get-out-of-political-trouble free card, and that’s simply illegitimate.
There are some who would criticize McCain for his wartime service, saying his bomb-droppings on North Vietnam don’t qualify him for the sympathy we should reserve for the innocent victims of that war. We won’t go there; McCain was fighting America’s enemies in a lawful, if lamentable, military action. Because of that, he’s earned our respect. But by doing what he’s doing in a naked attempt to shut up his critics on an issue that can really wound him politically, he’s rapidly losing any respect he’s earned.
Maybe it’s time for him to take a lesson from the Greatest Generation?
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 10:11 am and is filed under
Various Things & Stuff.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the
RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Blogs
The following comments are provided by readers and are the sole responsiblity of the authors. By publishing a comment here you agree to the comment policy. If you see a comment that violates the policy, please notify the Online staff.