Amanda Terkel has a staggering list of things John McCain has done that have earned him praise from campaign reporters, including riding first class on the Acela ("John McCain traveled like a man of the people"), joking about killing Iranian civilians ("like any guy you’d want to have around the dinner table"), joking about killing John Steward with an IED ("a guy with a good sense of humor") and so forth. It's almost as if they think Strangers on a Train is a depiction of typical early 21st century American life, all rail travel and murder.
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A Man for All Seasons
10 Jul 2008 07:15 pm
Comments (33)
doppelganger
Christ, the sloppiness must be is contagious.
Ever cheaper and more sleazy, Matt.
I'm an Obama supporter, but this kind of shit could make me consider voting for McCain.
I'm an Obama supporter, but this kind of shit could make me consider voting for McCain.Right, most of Obama's supporters are hard core supporters of Bush's war on the Iraqi people.
Let's be honest here. Anyone who understands just how bad McCain is and still votes for Obama out of spite - some blogger pissed you off - is a total moron. But then one has to be to support the murder of Iraqis in George W. Bush's unprovoked war of aggression.
I'm an Obama supporter
Since when?
Matt is exactly right; McCain has never been seriously tested. He is old and he represents Arizona.
McCain's political birth predates the cell phone and the commercial Internet. It's hard to imagine today, but McCain is from a bygone era where it's easy enough to say one thing in Flagstaff and the opposite in Tucson with voters in neither place even hearing about it.
Simply representing Arizona helps McCain too, because the Republican bench is deep with crazies here. This is the home of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose claim to fame is making prisoners wear pink underwear, for crying out loud.
Matt is exactly right; McCain has never been seriously tested. He is old and he represents Arizona.
McCain's political birth predates the cell phone and the commercial Internet. It's hard to imagine today, but McCain is from a bygone era where it's easy enough to say one thing in Flagstaff and the opposite in Tucson with voters in neither place even hearing about it.
Simply representing Arizona helps McCain too, because the Republican bench is deep with crazies here. This is the home of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose claim to fame is making prisoners wear pink underwear, for crying out loud.
Matt is exactly right; McCain has never been seriously tested. He is old and he represents Arizona.
McCain's political birth predates the cell phone and the commercial Internet. It's hard to imagine today, but McCain is from a bygone era where it's easy enough to say one thing in Flagstaff and the opposite in Tucson with voters in neither place even hearing about it.
Simply representing Arizona helps McCain too, because the Republican bench is deep with crazies here. This is the home of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose claim to fame is making prisoners wear pink underwear, for crying out loud.
Matt is exactly right; McCain has never been seriously tested. He is old and he represents Arizona.
McCain's political birth predates the cell phone and the commercial Internet. It's hard to imagine today, but McCain is from a bygone era where it's easy enough to say one thing in Flagstaff and the opposite in Tucson with voters in neither place even hearing about it.
Simply representing Arizona helps McCain too, because the Republican bench is deep with crazies here. This is the home of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose claim to fame is making prisoners wear pink underwear, for crying out loud.
Matt is exactly right; McCain has never been seriously tested. He is old and he represents Arizona.
McCain's political birth predates the cell phone and the commercial Internet. It's hard to imagine today, but McCain is from a bygone era where it's easy enough to say one thing in Flagstaff and the opposite in Tucson with voters in neither place even hearing about it.
Simply representing Arizona helps McCain too, because the Republican bench is deep with crazies here. This is the home of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose claim to fame is making prisoners wear pink underwear, for crying out loud.
Matt is exactly right; McCain has never been seriously tested. He is old and he represents Arizona.
McCain's political birth predates the cell phone and the commercial Internet. It's hard to imagine today, but McCain is from a bygone era where it's easy enough to say one thing in Flagstaff and the opposite in Tucson with voters in neither place even hearing about it.
Simply representing Arizona helps McCain too, because the Republican bench is deep with crazies here. This is the home of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose claim to fame is making prisoners wear pink underwear, for crying out loud.
I don't know Aatos; His internet skills seems to be about the same as yours.
I'm sorry for spamming, I kept getting a server error.
I'm sorry for spamming, I kept getting a server error.
A point worth repeating.
Aatos, this comment link is really screwed up. It usually results in an internal server error. Click the button once, go have a cup of coffee, and you'll get an error that is really the confirmation that your comment has been accepted. That's the Atlantic way. Get used to it.
As for the "A man for All Seasons" comment, my mother tried for most of her life to fit modern politics into that format, and she could never get it right. I haven't been able to either. It seems Matt has failed as well. That was a special time and it doesn't seem that there will ever be an analogous situation. But we all try, don't we?
"Strangers on a Train" is a great movie in spite of Farley Granger's stiff acting, and I resent your flippant reference to it in a post about presidential election politics. Robert Walker deserved an Oscar nomination for his performance. Also, Aunt Clara from "Bewitched" did a fabulous job as Walker's mother.
Criss cross!
If you have a father of McCain's age you may know something about them.
They're the ones who were generous (at least on Christmas, or when they were drunk) to a fault buying you the best BMX bike on the market at the time and disappearing to their rooms the instant they got home at night; they watched a lot of war movies on weekends: a lot of war movies.
They yelled at you in front of your friends for riding your motorcycle in the yard (after you had ridden your motorcycle in the yard - sans helmet - months beforehand without comment). They were tolerant of difference; they were capricious and kind. They were angry and sad.
In a lot of ways they had it easy.
John McCain is typical, and exceptional.
Click the button once, go have a cup of coffee, and you'll get an error that is really the confirmation that your comment has been accepted. That's the Atlantic way. Get used to it.
Click the button once, wait about ten seconds (maybe less) and open the thread in another tab, or in another window. Your comment will (almost always) be posted.
As for trains, if you really want to see what "a man of the people" faces, take a third class train ride in India. My advice: put your baggage on the floor (it probably won't be stolen) and stuff yourself in the luggage rack. It's the best seat in the house. That's the real reality that most people in the world face.
"That's the real reality that most people in the world face."
Oops that's not really true, is it? The real reality is that most people don't even have access to trains. Not even the third class kind. They only wish for clean water, but they don't get it. Instead, they walk for miles just to get dirty water.
"It's almost as if they think Strangers on a Train is a depiction of typical early 21st century American life, all rail travel and murder."
That didn't even make any sense. I see what you're trying to say - reporters praise McCain as a man of the people because he makes jokes about murder, but that only makes sense if the people at large... like making jokes about murder? Like they do in Strangers On A Train? What a waste of a Harvard education.
When I post on this site, it always looks like it stalls out. I open another browser window, see the comment was successfully posted, then stop loading the comment submission.
In terms of this post, I was wondering if Matt supports Frankin's run against Coleman. Do Frankin's jokes concern Matthew G.?
Matt some mofo hacked the link to your site on the Carpebagger Report blogroll and put your old site address there instead. No lie, I visited your site from the link on TCR maybe a day or so ago, so someone definitely took your proper link out and put the wrong one there.
Just to give you a heads up.
Yglesias doesn't give a shit who hacked his old site - he can't even handle THIS site correctly!
He simply can't be bothered to get off his fat ass and call his bosses and complain about the endless server errors that result in fifteen reposts in every fucking thread.
Obviously he doesn't give a rat's ass about this blog - or the fact that it makes him look like a moron.
This is THE worst fucking blog on the Internet, at least in terms of server handling.
Oops that's not really true, is it? The real reality is that most people don't even have access to trains. Not even the third class kind.
Well, the populations of India, China, Europe, Russia and North America do, and that's more than half the world's population right there.
"Well, the populations of India, China, Europe, Russia and North America do, and that's more than half the world's population right there."
Yeah, but the majority of India can only dream of riding a train. The majority of India makes less than a dollar a day. Given 30 years, they might have saved enough money for a single train ride. I'm sure China is like that too. Just because there are trains in a country doesn't mean that people can actually afford to ride them. Now it's true that beggars can manage to get on the trains for a few stops before they get kicked off. But the only reason they don't go to jail for it is because the beggars want to be arrested. At least they'll get food then. The police won't even give them that. The police will throw the beggars off the train no matter how fast it's moving. Take a trip to the real world and then talk to me.
This is THE worst fucking blog on the Internet, at least in terms of server handling.
It also has some of the whiniest blog commenters imaginable.
"The police will throw the beggars off the train no matter how fast it's moving. Take a trip to the real world and then talk to me."
Just so you know, the value of life is pretty low in America, but it's much lower elsewhere. In India, the value of a human life is about fifty cents. If you're a foreign tourist, it goes up to two dollars. They want to keep things looking nice, you know.
Reporters who cover McCain like the guy. Get over it.
And thanks for your link to Ms. Terkel. I liked her "Belarus — a place still covered in radiation from Chernobyl" - are we supposed to feel sorry for Gramm? Not supposed to joke about Belarus? If we can't joke about Belarus, in heaven's name what can we joke about?
Reading you two on McCain is like interacting with sleepy toddlers.
ostap, actually, sleepy toddlers are more apt to do stuff like make some kind of periodic crazed outburst, and then run out of the room or fall back asleep.
Much like you, actually.
LittleMac: Easily solved. FIX THE FUCKING SERVER!
Comments closed July 24, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Please proof-read things now and again
John Steward
And a joke made on the Daily Show isn't the same as the awful joke made about killing Iranians. It's like when you didn't bother to check about McCain's children serving - the genuine stuff gets tarnised by your snarky, ill-researched, pettiness.
There's enough to get him with without all that.
You've become like Ambinder's doppleganger.
Put both of you together and it might be balanced. It would also be the fattest, ugliest blogger. No mean feat.
Posted by James | July 10, 2008 7:32 PM