the rix mix

Watching the mean, cranky, psychotic, puny little man that is John McCain, who even with his wife's $100 million won't get himself a decent set of teeth, playing the POW card, telling outright lies, clenching his jaw as if he were wishing it was still legal to string up black men, and finishing up with a rant about experience, as if his running mate wasn't the biggest embarrassment in American political history, I was once again reminded that this election is a referendum on all of us. It's a referendum on whether we are still such a racist country that we are willing to elect such a vile, corroded, soulless excuse for a human being, and his willfully ignorant, religiously insane running mate, simply because their skin is white.

And I fear terribly that we are.

Jill at Brilliant At Breakfast

It is painful to watch an American hero lose his integrity because something in him tells him that his heroism is a transcendent qualification. John Kennedy, George McGovern, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, & John Kerry all might take issue with that sort of self regard. Fortunate is the hero who has to tell his story only once, to the storytellers, & wisely knows that is all he needs to say. For all his second-rateness as a senator, rarely a senate leader, McCain did show us something worthwhile in his unsuccessful 2000 campaign, which he proceeded to throw away by not being what he had claimed to be: a maverick. In the current Repug party, we can call Senator Olympia Snowe & Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger mavericks because they are neither bigots nor religious zealots, or concerned about pleasing bigots & zealots, & they work "across the aisle" because they must, & it gets things done, & they aren't doctrinaire. Many Repugs would purge those two from the party tomorrow. I still view McCain as a "default" candidate. The actual candidate is Sarah Palin, but she's like the inexperienced pitcher with the good scouting reports the organization had planned on bringing to spring training next year, but who gets called up after a month in AA ball because the bullpen is empty & the team is desperate.

Michael Shaw has a sharp commentary on two New York Times photos of the event. He thinks McCain was more effective rhetorically. But the photos capture McCain's strange personality. Shaw writes that one photo suggests Obama is the paternal figure, looking at McCain & touching him, as McCain avoids eye contact. But I see the pair as the angry, closed father, & Obama as the son who nonetheless respects & connects with him. Of the two, Obama is the well-adjusted personality. He likes people generally. The primary & sometimes most difficult act of compassion is acknowledging another's humanity, which is a step beyond acknowledging their existence.

Labels: THE election