Without debating whether the allegations against John McCain are valid or not, I am finding the story to be tragic.
McCain may or may not have had an affair with a woman who was lobbying 8 years ago. The NY Times newspaper story is sketchy. The Times is claiming that the story is substantiated but two major sources are people who had grown disillusioned with McCain. Disillusioned staffers can mean anything, anything at all.
John McCain has never claimed to be the finest role model in terms of personal life. In his first marriage he did admit to extramarital affairs. He met his current wife, Cindy, and divorced his first wife to marry Cindy in 1980. John McCain is a Senator and has been so for quite some time. He was a Naval pilot in Vietnam, shot down, and was captured. He spent over 5 years in a Vietnamese POW camp and was tortured and even turned down an early release. He came home a war hero and deservedly so.
McCain is not the slickest guy in the world. He’s noted for colorful language and being very much his own person. He’s running on a platform that we’ll be in Iraq for the next century, knows little about economic matters, and that there is no hope for a lot of jobs coming back. (His “There is no hope” campaign might need to be tweaked if he’s going to be successful.)
What disturbs me most about this story is that political parties and the news media tend to enjoy playing ‘gotcha.’
Katie Couric interviewed Hillary Clinton on 60 Minutes and asked about Hillary’s nickname of Frigidaire when she was in high school. A more stupid and childish question I have not seen. Everyone tried to play it with Mitt Romney as he was developing positions. “When you ran for class President when you were 12, you believed that the milk should cost 10 cents, but now you think it should cost 12 cents. Why did you flip flop your position, Mr. Romney?”
Give me a break.
We often complain that our best and our brightest do not run for public office at least on a national level. Who, in their right mind, would? Who wants to live under that kind of foolish scrutiny?
It is often said that people deserve the leaders they choose. We also deserve the leaders who choose to run by trying to assassinate the character of all involved.
So sad.
4 comments:
I think the incessant tearing down of public figures is due to several factors:
the dumbing down of society which is reflected in the over-emphasis on entertainment figures, did you hear Heath Ledger was found nude?, Britney's cracking up again, Lindsey Lohan's in rehab etc. etc. ad nauseum.
Corporate dominance of the news business does not relish deep analysis. Deep analysis is not necessary for a contented consumer class. Since the news is not concerned with this deep analysis, it has to fill the time with something. Even these people are embarrassed by a steady offering of jingoistic pablum and the default setting is entertainment news. In the context of political figures an enterainment approach results in gotcha journalism.
During last night's debate the questioners bumped into a question about Castro's passing of the torch. Why did no one ask the simplest question, "why do we have an embargo against Cuba, yet we trade freely with other despotic regimes?"
Twenty four hour news. This revolution in communication has created a yawning maw which must be fed. Some of the easiest fare to satisfy the insatiable beast consists of the empty calories of entertainment news or its politcal variant--Gotcha journalism.
I don't believe that the news media is either liberal or conservative. It's mostly lazy. They will report on what is easy to report on and easy to sell. Sadly, we live in a talk radio and sound byte culture that not only listens to nonsense, but embraces it.
Mr. Gonder, we trade with China for their cheap, lead tainted goods. Cuba hasn't caught on to the cheap manufacturing yet, but they have the human rights travesty down pat. America no longer can produce products to be self sufficient, and that is not a good situation to be in.
Mr. Short:
I'll take issue with one point you make: "America no longer can produce products to be self sufficient."
The version of that statement that makes sense to me is "American manufacturers that have set the bar of profits too high based on a cheap, non-union, non-environmentally accountable, non-human-rights encumbered business model find it relatively less profitable to produce goods in the country they ostensibly call home, because markets know no borders."
We, on the other hand, call this home. We do not, practically speaking, have the option of moving to where the jobs are.
The admonition to "buy local" imputedly asks us to consider the effect our purchases have on our local economy beyond simply getting the best deal. It asks us to be good citizens rather than good consumers. The only way a consumer economy makes sense is if it buys and sells to people who earn mutual benefit from the transaction. Capitalism dictates that, probably, one of those partners in the transaction will benefit more than the other but the string of transactions will average out to be a mutual benefit.
Aggressive one-sided trade is like having a hole in a balloon. We can keep introducing more air into the balloon but we'll eventually tire of blowing it up.
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