McCain: Can I tell you another story real quick?Bravo! You managed to turn a simple question about what your religion means to do and how that affects your everyday life, and you turned it into a superfluous story about being a POW. Oh, but it gets better, because as rickrocket discovered, this story wasn't all that original. Check out this excerpt from "The Gulag Archipelago" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
Warren: Sure. [TPIP: If you watched the forum it was striking how often Rev. Warren cut Obama off, but allowed McCain to ramble on forever with his stump speech that had absolutely nothing to do with the questions or religion]
McCain: A Vietnamese [TPIP: Kudos to McCain for not calling them "gooks" for a change] kept us in prison in conditions of solitary confinement for two or three to a cell [TPIP: Wait, how is being in a cell with 1-2 other people "solitary"?]. They did that because they knew they could break down our resistance. One of the techniques that they used to get information was to take ropes and tie them around your biceps, pull your biceps behind you [TPIP: McCain has previously stated that the Vietnamese wouldn't tie him too tight and would pad the ropes, he believed this was because he was an admiral's son, so he admittedly didn't get treated as poorly as the other POWs--but I'm sure it still sucked, just filling in context], loop the rope around your head, pull your head down between your knees and leave you in that position [TPIP: You may be asking yourself here what the hell this superfluous information has to do with religion, and you aren't alone in being confused. This, in fact, has nothing to do with his answer, but he likes to remind viewers that he was tortured, because he clearly figures he can't win on the issues, or even on character, so he has to push hard for the sympathy vote]. You can manage, it's very uncomfortable. One night I was being punished in that fashion. All of the sudden the door of the cell opened, the guard came in, a guy who was just what we call a gun guard. He just walked around the camp with a gun on his shoulder. He went like this and then he loosened the ropes. He came back about four hours later, he tightened them up again and left [TPIP: Still waiting for your point......]
The following Christmas, because it was Christmas Day, we were allowed to stand outside out cell for a few minutes [TPIP: Yes, you just skipped ahead in time and found that his story so far has been nothing but extraneous rambling about how he was tortured], and those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other although we certainly did. And I was standing outside for my few minutes, outside my cell. He came walking up [TPIP: I'm assuming "he" is a guard]. He stood there for a minute and with his sandal on the dirt in the courtyard he drew a cross and he stood there and a minute later, he rubbed it out and walked away. For a minute there, there was just two Christians worshiping together. I'll never forget that moment so every day.
Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The intense suffering reduced him to a state of despair.Hmm...POW story...silent meeting...the sign of a cross traced into the dirt in a show of Christian solidarity...the strength it gives to go on. Quite a bit in common wouldn't you say? Oh, but it gets better still, because it turns out McCain is a big fan of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, indeed McCain even wrote about Solzhenitsyn in an article, and even specifically mentioned "The Gulag Archipelago" in that very same article. And this would have been quite recent in his memory, since the article is from only two weeks earlier. And now suddenly McCain has a very similar story to volunteer at a forum where he was supposed to be discussing his personal feelings about religion. For religious people I'd imagine such fakery, insincere pandering and exploitation of their faith would make them pretty angry. I'd certainly be pissed if someone was lying to me and pretending to be in the same group with me while stealing "personal" stories. It shows the low regard he shows for religious faith and the religious people he thinks he can play for fools. Very insulting.
On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him. He saw no reason to continue his struggle, no reason to keep on living. His life made no difference in the world. So he gave up.
Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.
As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.
As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.
Solzhenitsyn slowly rose to his feet, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Outwardly, nothing had changed. Inside, he had received hope.
What. A. Phony.
At least Obama was believable. He came off as absolutely sincere, he actually answered the questions with honest and thoughtful answers instead of reciting talking points, he told real stories about his religious faith, and was able to quote some scriptures from memory. You will certainly never see any of that from McCain. Not to mention all of McCain's pandering to the religious right was blatant flip-flopping, which hopefully isn't lost on the people who have criticized him for years for being no fan of the religious right.
Update: Ah, and another inconsistency, McCain said last night it was a sandal that the guard drew the cross with, yet in a "Christmas ad" he did last year (oddly enough also about being a POW, how Christmasy), the cross was drawn with a stick, just like in the Solzhenitsyn book. And this isn't the first time McCain has been caught changing the details of his POW stories to fit whatever pandering he is presently engaged in (although at least that story had some truth to it...that is we can't prove it was plagiarized or made up, so we have to assume it is true, just like all of his POW stories...none of which may actually be true, or unembellished. Who knows what else he has blatantly lied about.)
Update #2: Speaking of his phoniness and pandering, McCain also said that he wouldn't have nominated "liberal" Supreme Court justices Ginsberg, Breyer, Souter, and Stevens, Yet as Jennifer Stringfellow points out, he DID vote to appoint three of them. The only one he didn't vote for was Stevens, because that was before McCain was in the Senate. So, he was blatantly pandering to the religious right, and LYING to the viewers by saying he wouldn't have nominated them, yet he clearly supported them at the time. Classic McCain. How does that make you feel voters? He lied to you, yet again.
Update #3: Warren also assured the audience that McCain was in a "cone of silence" during Obama's part, so he couldn't gain an edge by hearing the questions first and having time to prep his answers. However, now it has come out that McCain wasn't even on the premises for the first half hour or so, so they are just going on "McCain's honor" that they weren't listening on the radio or watching it on TV. Yeah right. I'll believe that when hell freezes over and volcanoes start shooting blueberry slushies. So now we have the answer for all of those people who thought something was up with how uncharacteristically coherent McCain was with his answers. Read more about "Cone-of-Silence-gate here.
Update #4: See more on the plagiarism story at JedReport.
Update (8/19): Read about The Legend of John McCain™.
Update (8/19) #2: Read Jack Cafferty's response to McCain's shallow and insincere performance at the faith forum. It is a good summation of how I felt about it, and about McCain in general. Kudos to Cafferty for leaving the typical media sugarcoating behind!
3 comments:
Great observations. Though I am not persuaded that McCain cribbed from Solzhenitsyn, I would not put it past him. In truth, I find his POW status as largely irrelevant and I am skeptical of the hero status he has enjoyed as a product of this experience. I am far, far more struck by the pandering nature of his rhetoric. It was clear he had way points he was going to be sure to touch upon, principal among them was this story. He know he had to throw this audience a well crafted and proven yarn about his faith. Kudos to him for wrapping it up in a piece of POW tripe. (Of course, those kudos are hardly deserved as a monkey at a typewriter would have known this was the best possible way to get this message across to his base.)
What strikes me this morning is the fact that the MSM is trumpeting last might as a McCain home-run. Are you freaking joking me! Even if I take my Barack-goggles off and look at the responses objectively, Obama utterly destroyed the man. No doubt Obama had themes he was trying to develop but he did it deftly. I know he set out to play himself as authentic, humble, and accessible and he did that. Compare, McCain.
Three times he blatantly and obviously sought to force the discussion to points he wanted to make. (There were more but these were the ones that made me throw up in my mouth a little.) He reminded me of the toll at the party who kept guiding the conversation to his trip to Kilamanjaro and the time he cried as he carried homeless children across a raging river in Ecuador whenever the hot chick came around. Moreover a couple of his anecdotes mere flat out lies. Not so authentic.
Throughout the night McCain projected a hubris that made me fearful for the future of this country. Consider his answer to the evil question. The man presumes to think that he can destroy evil. Good luck with that. Then he references to his own insights in a self agrandizing (sp) way. So, yeah, not so humble.
And then to top it all off he trots out that 5 million dollar zinger. Very accessible.
And then David Brody says McCain hit it out of the park. Are you freaking... I've got to lay down, this garbage is making my head hurt.
There is of course no way to verify it 100%, but I think there is a very good chance that he picked it up from there, especially since he never mentioned such an event until 1999 when he was gearing up to run for president and had some fluffing to do. The fact that he knows of "The Gulag Archipelago", and has written about it, I really doubt that is a coincidence, I think it was obscure enough that he thought he could steal it, change it a little, and turn it into an official McCain yarn. And of course he has been caught changing details of his accounts at will in the past. It all begs the question, how do we know anything about his POW experience is true? We have no way to verify anything, so almost all of the details could be exaggerated or completely made up. Especially things that didn't turn up until he wanted to run for president. But you are right, his POW time should mean nothing, because it in no way reflects on his abilities or his character.
And it shouldn't be any surprise that the media is doing their best to paint this as a win for McCain, even though clearly, as you said, Obama's answers were sooo much better. Yeah, if McCain won at all it was only in that the audience, who was largely McCain's base, applauded him a little bit more. Big surprise. There were obvious double standards in how Warren guided the forum. Bah, it was just stupid...and yes, even thinking about it makes it hard to hold down my dinner. Others have commented though that while McCain certainly didn't gain any new followers from her performance, it showed a sincere and thoughtful side of Obama that probably won over a lot of people, especially younger, less hardline Christians. I think it was a good thing for him to do, and I think if you aren't totally in the tank for McCain (the media) you could realize that. It wasn't Obama's job to be the favorite there, it was his job to try to achieve more balance by being real, and he did a great job.
But yeah...the media...drives me frickin' crazy in this election...I have no doubt if it wasn't for them carrying McCain's water for him Obama would have a huge lead over McCain. No doubt in my mind. Hopefully after the convention people start tuning in and paying more attention.
It Runs in the Family!!!
Cindy McCain has not only plagiarized recipes from the food network- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-weiner/mccain-family-recipes-lif_b_96666.html
Her bio says that she was a cheerleader at USC (she was not) and that her major was English (also not true- she majored in General Studies). USC records will confirm this.
She also said in a CNN interview in July, "I was the only child of a Western cowboy". http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/14/mccain.cindy/
Which would be true if that "Western cowboy" did not have another daughter- Kathleen Hensley Portalski http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93708729&ft=1&f=1102.
She is called an only child by the NPR, NY Times, CNN and others. Turns out she has TWO sisters- Dixie Burd, the daughter of Maguerite Johnson Smith "Smitty" Hensley (Cindy McCain's mother) http://www.mem.com/Story.aspx?ID=1560009.
Cindy and John’s children also seem to take after their mother. In their daughter Meghan McCain’s new children’s book, “My Dad, John McCain” she talks about her mother, father, and siblings Jack, Jimmy and Bridget (who was adopted) but does not mention her “dad’s” other children from his first marriage- Douglas and Andrew (adopted) and Sidney, Meghan’s half sister (named after her dad, John Sidney McCain!)
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/13/reporters-get-peek-at-meghan-mccains-childrens-book/
Two things I find really interesting:
- There are a large number of inaccuracies/lies/plagiarisms about Cindy and John McCain's past that continue to be repeated by the media and many of them have come directly from the McCains or their handlers.
- There seems to be very little “reason” or discernable motive behind them. For the most part, they are silly and irrelevant- what is the point?
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