In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.
In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.>>>>
"I enjoyed the off-duty life of a Navy flier more than I enjoyed the actual
flying," McCain writes. "I drove a Corvette, dated a lot, spent all my free
hours at bars and beach parties." McCain chased a lot of tail. He hit the dog
track. Developed a taste for poker and dice. He picked up models when he could,
screwed a stripper when he couldn't.>>>
Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain's service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot's behavior as heroic — "he wasn't exceptional one way or the other" — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. "This business of my country before my life?" Dramesi says. "Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he'd be dead."
>>>
If heroism is defined by physical suffering, Carol McCain is every bit her ex husband's equal. Driving alone on Christmas Eve 1969, she skidded out on a patch of ice and crashed into a telephone pole. She would spend six months in the hospital and undergo 23 surgeries. The former model McCain bragged of to his buddies in the POW camp as his "long tall Sally" was now five inches shorter and walked with crutches.
By any standard, McCain treated her contemptibly. Whatever his dreams of getting laid in Rio, he got plenty of ass during his command post in Jacksonville. According to biographer Robert Timberg, McCain seduced his conquests on off-duty cross-country flights — even though adultery is a court-martial offense. He was also rumored to be romantically involved with a number of his subordinates.
As much as this tightly-written story is a searing microscoping of the McCain we don't know, it is a much more damning indictment of our McMedia that fails to produce even one hint of anything approaching journalism of this type. Here were are months (years?) into this election cycle. How much time and money have the McMedia spent on fixating on polls, phony-debates, phony-issues (lipstick on pigs) and informational landfills full of similar garbage. And yet here we have the real McCain. And of course its not like this information required a team of DeepThroats to extract. It was there for any "journalist" of moderate work-ethic, drive and curiosity to ferret out.
And (again), much more needs to be said about excellence (oops I mean elitism), mediocrity and failure. The author of this piece somewhat kindly characterizes McCain as "mediocre" for his graduating 894th of 899 at the Naval Academy. That isn't mediocrity, that's a fucking failure. And the only reason McCain isn't in his own personal dustbin of history is becasue--like George W. Bush--he relied upon and beneffited from the only kind of affirmative action conservative whites love....the long-thrown shadow of family legacy, power and influence. "Legacy" programs at otherwise respectable schools like Harvard and Yale are the welfare trains for spoiled fuckups like Bush and McCain. And they provide a undeserved teflon coating for future fuckups as well.
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