John McCain: Wife-Beater?
They say the man has a bad temper -- he's been called McNasty -- and I don't doubt it. Pick through this guy's history and there's bound to be plenty of bad news there.
I can't believe the media isn't making more of his troubles over the years. I suppose a guy can be a POW for five years, be tortured, wasted away, and come back home perfectly normal and well-adjusted. But as we've seen with some of our returning heroes from Iraq -- or go back to Vietnam -- there's a lot of difficulties there that need to be worked through. And with suicides and family troubles, these difficulties have a way of lingering on.
One obvious McCain sore spot the media should examine is his first marriage. I saw an article in the last couple weeks that presented McCain coming home to his poor wife and dumping her. She'd somehow been in an accident and was crippled up, not quite the way he remembered her. So he started an affair with Cindy and continued with that for nine months or so before getting a divorce and marrying her. Why a despicable thing like this is untouchable, I don't know. Pretend it's something Bill Clinton did. Marriages fall apart from time to time and usually it's nobody's business. But John McCain is a man who might raise his hand and take a vow to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. His word is already no good!
Now today there's this callous, unthinking remark -- supposed to be a joke, I guess -- about him beating his wife. "I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago." If I'm John McCain this is an area I don't go -- what his relationship is to his wife and how bad it can be. Or are we not supposed to remember his famous temper tantrum, reported on, when he called Cindy an obscene name in public? So, he's got the whole first wife thing, then his outburst against Cindy, and now he makes a supposed joke about how he stopped beating his wife? The guy needs serious help.
2 comments:
This is not an off-the-cuff joke. It is part of the plan to head off any reports of real violence on his part. According to this story (not yet confirmed by others) "... two emergency room physicians in Phoenix claim that Cindy McCain sought medical attention (in the 1980s) in the Phoenix area for injuries consistent with physical violence: bruises, contusions and a black eye . There were at least two more visits for medical attention in the Phoenix area by Cindy, with similar injuriesi, between 1988 and 1993."
See http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09272008.html
I am DEFINITELY no McCain apologist (may his fall from national politics be swift and permanent), I'm fairly certain that this remark was a reference to the old gag about not being able to best the media. The bit had a reporter asking someone, "When did you stop beating your wife?" hoping the subject will trip up and answer, "I didn't!" meaning that he didn't ever beat his wife, but sounding like he never STOPPED.
It's an old joke, and an unfortunate choice, for sure, but I doubt it had any hidden meaning--on his part, anyway.
I agree that the man's short fuse is a HUGE issue for a would-be commander in chief.
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