Vidal: As far as I’m concerned, the only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself.posted by ericb at 3:14 PM on June 15, 2008 [1 favorite]
Buckley: Now, listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddam face and you’ll stay plastered!
The McCain myth, as we know, is built on the foundation of his five and a half years of captivity in Hoa Lo Prison, aka the "Hanoi Hilton." He was flying a bombing raid in October 1967; his plane was shot down, he parachuted into the middle of a lake in Hanoi, and, with two broken arms and one broken knee, swam to shore. He was stabbed and beaten—bone sticking out of his right knee—and taken to Hoa Lo. His captors did not set his fractures and tortured him regularly, trying to drag false admissions out of him. When they learned that he had a famous father—who was, by 1968, the commander of all US naval forces in the Pacific—they offered him an early release for PR purposes. Because military regulations held that captured prisoners must be released in the order in which they were captured, he refused, spending much of the remainder of his captivity in solitary confinement. It's a staggering story, told most grippingly, in my reading, by David Foster Wallace.Tomasky summarizes:
It is also just the right tale of heroism for an unwanted war. If McCain had shot down the greatest number of North Vietnamese, who would celebrate him? If he had led a great raid, most people would be indifferent to him, or—worse—Seymour Hersh or some other investigative journalist would likely have found out by now that innocent women and children were slaughtered. It was by suffering in a cell, serving as a kind of metaphor for American suffering in a war most Americans gave up on early in his confinement, but at the same time holding fast to principle under the most unimaginable circumstances, thereby redeeming some notion of American honor in a dishonorable situation, that McCain became an American hero.
... each of the three [books under review] makes persuasive arguments that while there has been much to respect in McCain in the past, there remain today only shards and vestiges of that man; that in doing what he had to do to become the nominee of a party of orthodox conservatism, he has so sublimated his honorable instincts that they have all but atrophied. He's not only adopted domestic policy positions he'd long opposed, he has openly pandered to the conservative Republican base by supporting most of Bush's positions in legislation on the treatment of detainees.posted by russilwvong at 9:54 PM on June 15, 2008 [2 favorites]
It was by suffering in a cell, serving as a kind of metaphor for American suffering in a war most Americans gave up on early in his confinement, but at the same time holding fast to principle under the most unimaginable circumstances, thereby redeeming some notion of American honor in a dishonorable situation, that McCain became an American hero.The mystery, perhaps, is that he did not continue to uphold his principles after the 2000 Republican primaries. He didn't tough it out after Bush ran his racist and divisive campaign in order to push McCain into the ground. He is still a hero, though, because eating whatever shit that rolls downhill until you get yours is a reasonably American tradition. He didn't complain at the shabby treatment he got from his GOP bosses. I guess that's heroic these days.
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Gore Vidal: That’s what he tells us.
Gore Vidal is an asshole.
posted by dhammond at 1:23 PM on June 15, 2008 [8 favorites]