John McCain once again "jokes" about his desire to kill Iranians. This time, the joke is a little bit more of a real joke, but the targets of his lust for killing foreigners are clearly ordinary Iranian civilians. If a major Iranian political leader were to repeatedly joke about bombing the United States and killing Americans, you can just imagine the shit-storm about how Iran isn't a normal country with normal interests, that it's run by irrational fanatics, appeasement won't work, etc.
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The Killing Joke
08 Jul 2008 08:16 pm
Comments (36)
What are the odds he'll backtrack under pressure from Big Tobacco rather than furrin policy experts?
This is so incredibly offensive and horrifying. I'm sure this will get nary a glance from our wonderful media.
Anybody remember Watergate? Part of the fun then was the revelation that President Nixon said ill-advised and off-color things in the relative privacy of the Oval Office. I suppose on some level the public always knew abstractly that presidents probably said the same sorts of things as the rest of us. But we didn't really know.
And now here's McCain, who doesn't have the wit to realize that such things should not be said out loud to a general audience. I can't decide if that reveals something about McCain himself, or about the de-evolution of our political discourse in general.
I suppose it could be both...
Bombing is non-specific and impersonal but personally wishing everyone in the country gets cancer and dies is way more creepy. This was even less of a joke than the incredibly stupid bomb-bomb-Iran "joke" he made.
Once again, what should be concentrated on here is the guarantee that McCain will start a war with Iran - assuming Bush doesn't do it first - or keep one going if Bush does.
This should be raised at every possible opportunity. For instance, it should be raised when McCain utters his fantasy about balancing the budget by "winning" in Iraq. How do you "win" in IRAQ, then start a war with IRAN and somehow save money fighting an enemy three times larger and much more focused than the one in Iraq?
But again, nobody will ask this question because the Iran war is the "elephant in the tent" - the "War That Must Not Be Named".
At least Matt answered my two questions on Iran - good for Matt. Now can we get somebody - anybody - to ask Obama those same two questions - and justify his answer?
We know McCain's answer: he doesn't give a shit - "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
And as I've been saying lately, McCain is the anointed next President of the United States by the MSM and the Powers That Be.
So apparently nothing can stop this war from happening.
People need to be reminded just how bad this could turn out:
1) Thousands of US military dead - not over five years but in one year.
2) Millions of Iranians dead. No questions about the legitimacy of the body count, either.
3) Oil at $300/barrel, gas at $10/gallon.
4) A jump in the cost of the war from the $10-12 billion a month Iraq is to maybe $25-50 billion per month.
5) Terrorists operating in US cities, blowing up car bombs at your commute transit stations - so much for Matt's light rail - and suicide bombers blowing themselves up in your club at night.
More dead US civilians than 9/11 EVERY MONTH for the next ten years. Bye-bye, what's left of your civil liberties.
6) The Chinese, pissed at being cut off from Iranian oil and gas, dump the US dollar - on top of $300/barrel oil and half a trillion dollars a year in war costs. Bye-bye, US economy. You think the recession is bad? How about a depression?
This is what the US is facing over the next five or ten years if either Bush or McCain start a war with Iran.
And assuming that just because all that stuff is "bad" that therefore neither Bush nor McCain would start such a war is to completely miss the point, which is: neither Bush nor McCain nor Dick Cheney are going to be harmed by these events at all. YOU will be. They won't. So why do you think they care what YOU think about it?
Their cronies in the oil companies and the military-industrial complex and in Israel are going to make out like bank robbers (much better than me, I might add.) So what's the downside for THEM?
McCain once admitted that he was a war criminal during the Vietnam War. I suppose that like many senile men he wants to relive his youth.
I used to respect McCain, like him even. But he's made it clear by now that he is just another arrested development eighth-grader with a macho complex. We already have one of those in the White House. Sorry, John, the adults are taking the reins back in November.
Apparently keeping a muzzle on this old fool is more than one person's full time job. Lieberman on one side, his wife on the other, and he still has his foot in his mouth half the time.
Agh.. what a sad old man.
This time, the joke is a little bit more of a real joke,
I disagree.
Whatever the policy merits, "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" was high camp. It's jarring, but reasonably witty and--in a weird way--lighthearted. By drawing parallels between his foreign policy approach and a knuckleheaded pop song from a previous era, McCain is making sport (perhaps unconsciously) of his reflexive war cheerleading. The war cheerleading is frightening, but the attempt at levity is catchy and not altogether unsuccessful.
"Maybe that’s a way of killing them" is a horse of a different color altogether. It's the quintessential bad joke: grim and unfunny and instantly unsettling to the audience. Gallows humor at a cocktail party.
Matt,
Why aren't you writing about the global food shortages and related violence? That's the killing "joke" of global economic trade policies and futures markets at the moment.
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Matt,
Why aren't you writing about the global food shortages and related violence? That's the killing "joke" of global economic trade policies and futures markets at the moment.
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Casual talk of mass murder/genocide has become commonplace among so-called conservatives: "turn x into a parking lot / into glass", "bomb the y out of x" etc. .
I remember sitting in an über-hip restaurant with some Harvard business school types in early 2004 and the guy next to me kept going on about how we should "level Fallujah", later he threw a hissy fit when I had an after dinner cigarette...
They DID level Fallujah, by the way.
This is so incredibly offensive and horrifying. I'm sure this will get nary a glance from our wonderful media.
Well said. That really seems to be the problem. The more hideous it gets, the more complicit the news media seems to feel w/r/t the hideousness. Some might call it a vicious circle.
This is a great example of why we should belong to the International Criminal Court; with this remark McCain is clearly guilty of a crime against humanity.
Cigarette tax was raised $1.20 per pack in Massachusetts last week. Give Deval Patrick a Nobel Prize.
That was a crude and tasteless joke, and calls into question the man's judgment. However, I don't think McCain actually wants to kill Iraqi civilians. Haven't we all made tasteless jokes on occasion?
Wow. I feel badly for McCain's staff. It's pretty hard to keep making your candidate look good when they have such a tin ear.
Haven't we all made tasteless jokes on occasion?
Not while running for president, in front of cameras. You recognize the times in your life that require a little more decorum and act appropriately, yes?
Also, on the "more of a real joke" thing, I thought Matt meant that "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" was kind of a Weird Al polka parody type thing, while this most recent one was more of the standard "Two Jews walk into a bar, and bomb Iran" variety.
What this demonstrates at the most fundamental level is how much McCain views Iran as a land of hostile others. The people of Iran are just an obstacle to the US (and its ally Israel) achieving their ends. There is no belief in common interest. No hope of a shared vision for the future.
Just the promise of war. More war.
The comment about McCain being a sad, old man is exactly right. He reminds me of some family members of mine who, having gone past 75, decided that they could say anything about anyone and that was that.
How many times does a man joke about killing strangers who antagonize him before you accept the fact that people make jokes about what's most serious to them.
Ah, Matt. I think you and your commentors should lighten up a bit. It's a joke.
Sometimes I get this creepy feeling that McCain is actually trying to throw this election.
Really odd but that was the first thing I thought of. The left has no sense of humor.
A guy carries a sheep into the kitchen where his wife is fixing dinner. He says, "I wanted you to see the pig I've been sleeping with."
The wife looks over at him and says, "That's not a pig. That's a sheep."
The guy says, "I wasn't talking to you."
Here is a response
http://www.thenewsbuckit.com/2008/07/does-matthew-yglesias-not-watch-iranian.html
"Well, it isn't a normal country. And they're not joking. Let's not forget that this is the same government that hosts both Holocaust Denial and a "World Without America" conferences."
Haven't we all made tasteless jokes on occasion?
Yes. But my standards of personal dignity require that I not act like a jackass when acting like an adult is expected. I walk around shirtless on occasion, too, but if I were running for president or speaking with a group of people about serious issues, I'd wear a decent set of clothes.
The left has no sense of humor.
Actually, what never ceaes to shock me is the number of things that Republicans find "funny." When you misbehaved like McCain did, didn't your mother yell at you and tell you that such things weren't funny? How were you raised?
That said, once you get to a certain age, as McCain has, I can see how you'd start thinking, "screw it, I can say anything I want!"
"I used to respect McCain, like him even. But he's made it clear by now that he is just another arrested development eighth-grader with a macho complex. We already have one of those in the White House. Sorry, John, the adults are taking the reins back in November. "
Agreed. I'm starting to think that the only reason McCain was a "maverick" in the past was out of an adolescent sense of rebellion. That even his sense of honor is adolescent -- like one of those teenagers who's ready to get into a fistfight if anybody looks at him wrong, "Whatchjoo lookin' at man? You dissin' me?" Thwack.
And have you ever noticed that the sign that somebody has gotten old and is no longer capable of learning and being flexible (important traits in a president) is when they start to become a caricature of their own trademark personality traits? (And this is not necessarily a chronological age thing --I've met people who've reached this stage at the age of forty.)
I think McCain has reached this stage in life. Perhaps later than most, but he's reached it.
Hector: "Haven't we all made tasteless jokes on occasion?"
i wouldn't vote for you for President either.
That no one has noted the Batman reference after 30+ comments is somehow more shameful than McCain's vulgar quip.
That no one has noted the Batman reference after 30+ comments is somehow more shameful than McCain's vulgar quip.
really, really? we aren't all little boys.
If a major Iranian political leader were to repeatedly joke...
You advance an incredibly foolish consistency. Iran is NOT a normal country, in the sense of liberal democracies. Ask any non-hizbollahi Iranian. They are myriad and will tell you all about it. That doesn't mean they want their country bombed, nor shouldn't you combat people who want war with Iran. But do it honestly -- in a way that anyone familiar with the material could credit.
Honestly, Matthew: "Lust for killing foreigners?" Please show me where John McCain has ever demonstrated a lust for killing foreigners.
You should write a screenplay. You could use a ton of your blog material.
Comments closed July 22, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Incidents like this ought to convince anyone of ordinary intelligence that McCain doesn't have the common sense to be president.
You know, I remember a conservativism that valued things like obedience to the law, respect for the norms of civilized behavior, honorable dealings with others. Those conservatives would no more have made a crack like this than they would spit on the floor in a neighbor's house. What the heck happened to those guys, and how did we get saddled with this pack of uncouth barbarians?
Posted by rea | July 8, 2008 8:36 PM