Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Old School

John McCain still doesn't get it, and as long as he thinks he has a shot at the '08 nomination, he'll never understand what's going on.

Conservative darling Sen. John McCain was harangued by hecklers, booed and even subjected to paper airplanes as he gave the commencement speech for the New School yesterday.
Afterward, the Arizona Republican, who is widely believed to be preparing for a presidential run in 2008, appeared annoyed by the rude reception.

"I feel sorry for people who live in a dull world where they can't listen to the views of others," McCain told the Daily News.


Despite how it's being portrayed, I don't think it's just about McCain's outspoken support of the Iraq War. It's about the politicization of commencement addresses in general; it's about McCain toting his stump speech from Jerry Falwell U (Go Fightin' Faghaters!) straight to the New School. McCain has nothing fresh or insightful to say, he's merely using what's left of his "straight shooter" cred to take his campaign speech to a couple schools.

And it's just not gonna fly anymore. People are realizing that whatever McCain was in 2000, he's just another administration butt-boy now. These guys smeared him and his family, and he doesn't have the goddamned pride to tell them to go fuck themselves? And if anything, he's more pro-war than even the Bushies.

But worst of all is this passive-aggressive trope he's adopted, that he "feels sorry" for people who "can't listen to the views of others". Bullshit. Listen, bub, we've been inundated in this nonsense for a good four years now, if you count the run-up to war. Every opponent, no matter how well-stated, was shouted down, lampooned, called an idiot or a traitor, etc., etc. So you can take that "feels sorry" shit and shove it sideways. Tell the troglodytes on your own side of the aisle how you "feel sorry" for them, if intolerance is your main problem. The opponents were right, the proponents were wrong (and obnoxious about it), none of them has admitted that they were wrong, nor offered any sort of conciliatory talk. Yet it's always (and only) the left that must apologize for their rudeness.

In the meantime, tens of thousands of lives have been lost, hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, two-thirds of the country now consistently disapproves of this administration and its handling of the war, and all we get is this same smarmy horseshit softsoaped as serious foreign policy.

This is not a football game, and we are not required to root for an incompetent quarterback. The fallback position seems to be that the only way we can win is if we hang in there and keep rooting for Brett Fav-ruh to pull out another one of his patented miracles. But we do not have Fav-ruh at the helm, more like Todd Marinovich or Ryan Leaf, a high-priced high-profile flame-out bust. Two-thirds of the team wants to yank the QB and the coach, and change the game plan, because this one has been a spectacular failure.

And we're goddamned tired of all the waterboys coming off the bench to lecture us about our poor sportsmanship. I got your poor sportsmanship right here.

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