After reading a bit of a recent Time magazine, I found an article about Sarah Palin. I was so struck by the attention given to such a cartoonish personality (even if it was only two pages) that I began taking notes. I'm thinking this may be a multiple-part series of diatribes; I've started at the "fourth" installment because my notes are more extensive on a certain blip of information later on in the article.
I'll set it up for you:
During a Jan. 12 appearance on the Today show, [McCain] was asked by Matt Lauer if it was true that his campaign had done only a cursory background check of Palin before selecting her as his running mate. McCain disavowed responsibility for the process used to scrutinize her with a terse "I wouldn't know." When pressed, he added, "I wouldn't know what the sources are or not." Brushing aside questions about the events surrounding the 2008 election he insisted he is proud of everyone who worked on his campaign and is focused on the pressing issues of the present. - Time, 43
I am the farthest thing from 'knowledgeable citizen' that there can be - I'll admit that outright. But I am very tired of the media, no matter what their bias may be, painting John McCain so broadly. Maybe he didn't really do as much as we expected of him: he lied to enemies of the state about his rank and heritage (to save his life and the lives of those around him) and his daddy got him into more than a few sweet spots in his life (...that's actually 100% true), but don't be negligent in broadcasting such damning opinions of the man. There's a law about that and it's called Slander.
To understand why the media--and I am loathe to use that ignorant identifier but I'm not clever enough to discover something else off the top of my head--picks on John McCain, to truly understand it, you must first understand John McCain. Now I've only been aware of him for about twelve years. I have Lewis Black to thank for that, as a matter of fact. What I have come to understand about John McCain is that he is a politician of the antebellum order, a retro-old school style of politicking: follow the leader until it's too late; give the people what they ask for, not exactly what they want or need; cover your ass with the same tenacity you utilized on the campaign trail, because if you admit to nothing there can only exist speculation instead of damning facts (modern 'politics' thrives on this sort of side-stepping); and finally never let your feet stop moving. Pundits on both sides of the two party spectrum are giving McCain guff for not addressing the missteps and lost intelligence of his bid for president. The reason he's not retreading old waters is because he doesn't need to.
Media networks are not looking for information but gossip. The past is not news, but history - that's why it is called the past. Loudon Wainwright III once said that the good old days are "good because they're gone." McCain understands this--his problem is enunciating all of the logic and truly good advice he has imprisoned in his head. After umpteenth months working for the G.O.P. the parts of his frontal and temporal lobes which are most active in truth telling have lost a lot of game time. Like any muscle, the less you use it the weaker it gets. Such is the case for John McCain. Instead of coming down from his cross, rehabilitating with a year or so of local poverty relief and finally get his hat back into the national arena around the end of this year (monsoon and tsunami season), he has allowed his Gold's Gym devolve into a White Castle.
McCain's advantage (perhaps his only advantage) is his understanding that no one really wins in the blame game. Pointing fingers is as American as barely legal titties being displayed for all the world to see for profit. As tempered as McCain is, he knows throwing around accusations will yield no practical results. Right now, America is Rome and we want to see blood. Because McCain is not obliging to our mania, we chastise him for waffling on issues (insert issue here) and berate him openly for not pinning a target to some one's back.
Sealing a hole in a bucket stops a leak, not a wad of chewing gum. Sometimes the situation calls for a whole new bucket to take over. At this point in time, however, America only seems interested in using the same old worn, perforated bucket we've had since Nixon. Bonnie and Clyde got off easy compared to America's bucket. Before this metaphor gets too out of hand (i.e. who has to fill and carry the bucket .vs. who gets to use the water) I'd better get back on track...John McCain, right?
Yes - John McCain is an old senator who hasn't gotten the memo about modern politics. Modern politics are petty, deconstructive and afflicted with tunnel vision. This is all referential to America, mind you. France, Spain, Canada, Germany and Italy may have a few years of technology development to run through before catching up with us, but their governments are running circles around ours.
It goes without saying that we are still a young nation and still working through the throws of adolescence, but with almost four hundred years of history to look back on surely we can learn, and not observe, from our mistakes as well as our triumphs. Perhaps since America is so silly right now for creating lists of the best or worst things, may I present a few ideas in the rawest form. The following is a list of issues that the rest of the free world has us whipped on, and the ubiquitous solution is both attention and action:
marijuana, national health care, gay marriage (for some reason), fire arm violence, abortion (again, I'm not sure why this is an issue), drug and alcohol abuse, public schools, poverty relief, church and state (I know--pretty weird, huh?), election technology (as long as the machines aren't sent from the Middle East, we should be on Easy Street), the cult of celebrity, health and weight problems, local job markets, illegal immigration (if we try being affable like Spain we can get away with saying 'No, sorry - full up' too), climate control, medicinal break throughs, economic stability, and many other issues that I'm not smart enough to be aware of.
Where we're supposed to come up with the money to fund these necessities is another question and answer all together, but McCain should at least know what he's up against. If Sarah Palin were to run for the presidency in 2012 (and if the Mayans really did see this coming and Palin is the herald of the apocalypse, I'll be very upset), she would no doubt choose McCain to fill some sort of post. Hopefully he'll think twice and decline. But if he does take a job under President Palin he needs to come prepared; because there will be no help from either ruling party, and especially no help from the Search & Destroy White House*.
* Search & Destroy White House will from now on be my dialectal term for Sarah Palin's imaginary administration. Details as to the reasoning behind this distinction will come in time.
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