McCain pops on Leno to let us all know he was a POW, and that is why he can not count his houses:
In that vein, McCain joked that he might make big news if he picked a running mate with no particular partisan leanings, no clear political principles and who “may need a job about that time.” The audience cracked up when they realized McCain was talking about Leno.
“I can make more doing a week in Vegas,” Leno joked.
McCain noted that the “house is nice,” a reference to the White House.
“You’ve got enough of those,” Leno cracked. “You need a white one, too.” Later, he asked McCain: “For $1 million, how many houses do you have?”
At that, McCain got serious, saying he had been imprisoned for five-and-a-half years during the Vietnam war, and that “I didn’t have a house. I didn’t have a kitchen table. I didn’t have a table.” He also praised his late father-in-law — the source of his wife’s wealth — as a man who came from nothing to be successful.
At what point does this become a joke in the larger culture, rather than just the blogospheric subculture?
DrDave
At the point where the Dems grow a pair and start pounding him with it.
Based on past history, don’t hold your breath.
Sleeper
I wish someone, anyone, would interrupt when he goes off on his Hanoi Hilton tangent and say, “Senator, I know you’re reluctant to talk about your POW experience, but could you stop reluctantly talking about it for two minutes and answer my question?”
demkat620
Pat Buchanan said this will keep working and will not become a joke. evar.
IOKIYAR. ‘Nuff said.
The Dude Abides
What’s amazing to me is that hardly anyone on the TV has said anything about McCain’s father-in-law’s ties to the Arizona mob. Hensley was convicted of mob-related activities one time and acquitted of additional mob-related activities several years later. Hensley’s business partner Kemper Marley was one of the biggest mobsters in Arizona, and was suspected of ordering the car bomb assassination of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles in 1976. Marley’s underling was convicted of ordering the hit on Bolles, who was getting too close to uncovering some mob ties to state politicians.
TheFountainHead
Rachel, to her credit, called him out on this last night during the convention coverage, but Pat was there to keep pounding his fist about how it didn’t matter whether it was ridiculous or not, because it works. Do they understand that loosely translates to, “We don’t care if it’s all lies, the Americans are idiots and eating it up! Why should we stop lying?!?”
khead
My old man never had a kitchen table and the coal company owned his house when he was a kid. Plus,that shit went on for longer than 6 years.
I just described everyone over 70 that’s lived in southern WV their whole life.
Dad in ’08.
Jon H
Between the ridiculous Abba thing, and this, it’s like he’s trying to make his first marriage disappear by fuzzing the timeline. He’s pretending that he got out of ‘nam and soon after had the good fortune of marrying into money. There’s no acknowledgement that he wasn’t a young never-married man when he was captured.
If you look at the *actual* timeline, McCain’s basically saying his imprisonment earned him the right to dump his old wife a few years later and get a young sexy rich wife.
zoe from pittsburgh
Oddly enough just this morning the insipid Mika from Morning Joe tried to ask one of McCain’s advisors about his comment on Leno– they actually ran the clip. She didn’t openly criticize it so much as sort of clumsily express how odd and off it was. McCain’s advisor was all but HE was a POW and that is totally relevant to EVERYTHING. It was sort of sad.
mark
If Obama goes on Leno now, he’s a celebrity.
If he declines, he’s an elitist.
Besides, McCain was a POW.
Blue Buddha
Y’know, if you didn’t mention that McCain was on Leno last night and didn’t link the article, I’d swear that it was written in The Onion
PS: Did you know that John McCain was a POW?
ksmiami
It is funny though, as he keeps it off, dems who actually once liked the guy are starting to call bullshit. My favorite boss served as a Marine in Vietnam and he never bragged about his experience actually dodging bullets and hoping for dry socks. McCain really is an asshole at this point. I can’t stand him.
SpotWeld
I can’t help but wonder at how inept the spin McCain has been trying to put on this. It would have much more effective to call his houses “an investment in America” or somesuch, and turn that back against his opponent.
Obviously the reference to his time as a POW is supposed to turn into some sort of jab at Obama’s lack of experience (military or otherwise), but now he’s starting to sound like that old uncle who comes over during the holidays and awlays tells the exact same stories over and over again.
For half a second I thought he was going to turn to Jay as ask “Tell me, do you like gladiator movies?”
Jon H
Re: my comment above…
More to the point, McCain’s a liar. He had a kitchen table. The one his first wife was sitting at, alone, waiting for him to return to.
Asshole.
Blue Buddha
One guy I used to work with was also a Marine in Vietnam, and get this… another guy who worked with us was Vietnamese born at the height of the war (1968). Every once and a while he’d share war stories with the Vietnamese guy, but other than that, he almost never mentioned anything about his service.
Brian
Let’s assume for the moment that this goes beyond the fact that he doesn’t think the question is relevant. He should know, after almost thirty years in politics, that it’s going to be asked. Even if he doesn’t, his advisers should. He’s already being slapped around for his lack of knowledge about his real estate holdings and should have enough sense to imagine that another error could make the issue a lot more difficult. Wouldn’t it make sense to (a) call up his fucking wife some time over the last three days and ask them how many fucking houses they own, (b) actually have one of his staff members do it, like he promised, or (c) think of something along the lines of answering the question with the actual number but also a line like, “Sen. Obama is focused on my homes. I’m focused on protecting the country,” yada, yada, yada? In other words, is McCain an idiot?
cleek
yes.
Bedlam UK
He reminds me of Grandpa Simpson. I can imagine a good Simpsons scene with McCain/Grandpa
Street Questionaire:
Q: Hi Sir, thanks for your time, so question 1. How many houses do you own.
A: When I was 20 I didn’t have a house!
Q: Erm, ok, but how many houses do you have now?
A: I didn’t have a table either !
Q: Ok, lets move onto question 2.
Q: Where was your last Exotic Vacation?
A: My neighbour went to this Elite sounding place called Hawaii to see his Grandma. He’s always showing off!
Q: But where have YOU been for an Exotic Vacation?
A: Well I stay in America dammit, I went to Hawaii, where I met my second wife. We honeymooned there as well !
Q: Ok, so you consider the US State of Hawaii to be Exotic?
A: Dammit Sonny ! I’m a true american, I stay in America for my Holidays.
Q: I think thats enough for today sir, thank you.
A: I was in the war sonny, showed that Kaiser !
Oh Grandpa, we love your wandering mental faculties
nightjar
Then several of Mccain’s fellow prisoners got together and decided Mccain was exaggerating and leaving out key facts about his time at the Hanoi Hilton. They decided to organize and go public with their information because they don’t think Mccain should be Prez and formed a group called The Hanoi Hilton Prisoners for Truth. Could be Coming soon to a theater near you. And if so, the bonus feature will show Michelle Malkin laying an egg.
chopper
ouch. i think only biden could pull a line like that off. especially cause he could say ‘you know, my first wife was in a car accident too, john. only she died. and back then all i could think of is how i would have given anything in the world for her to be alive, even if she was disfigured or disabled. i would have stayed with her and taken care of her because she was my goddamn wife. what kind of shitheel are you?”
Zifnab
Pat Buchanan says a great many silly things. Like “Dr. [Martin Luther] King is one of the most divisive men in contemporary history” and “Rail as they will about ‘discrimination,’ women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism” and “I’m going to run for President”.
So… yeah. That’s Pat.
Dennis - SGMM
Most of us just don’t bring up our Vietnam service that much because it was decades ago, most people don’t care, and other Vietnam vets are the only ones likely to understand what it meant. Vietnam has become a quick photomontage of helicopters, guys with M-16’s and a napalm drop. That’s okay. Harping on it in your personal life always struck me as a way to sound like Al Bundy with his high school football reminiscences.
Dan
When Stewart or Colbert make a nightly running bit about it. Which, judging by the ludicrous over-use of the p.o.w. card, won’t be long.
Punchy
Did he also mentioned he was imprisoned for 9 months in the uterus of The Maternal Oppressor, devoid of chairs, tables, and arms until a few months in, constantly having fluid in his lungs (torture! waterboarding!), and never given solid food to eat or fresh air to breathe?
Sympathy starts at conception, bitches.
Notorious P.A.T.
That’s the truth, though. There _are_ enough idiots in this country for a strategy of lies to work–and work well.
wasabi gasp
Is McCain running to be the president of somebody’s crawl space?
CFisher
Wait. McCain was a POW?
I’m surprised he hasn’t mentioned it before now.
Cris
That’s because he was a Republican.
Jon H
Why doesn’t McCain just add Batman-style cartoon “POW!” bubbles at random points in all his campaign commercials?
“John McCain believes our corporations are overburdened with POW! taxes…”
w vincentz
Actually, Johnnie McPow is very lucky that the North Vietnamese didn’t kill him when he was dragged from the lake in Hanoi in his failed 24th bombing run in his futile attempt to continue the genocide he participated in.
For sure, if he’d been dropping bombs on my neighbors’ homes or mine, I’d be the first one there to slit his miserable throat.
wasabi gasp
The kitchen table thing: Is McCain trying to tell the American people that, in the face of their current economic hardships, they should be thankful they have a table?
Really? He’s gonna go with that?
McCain’s conditions as a POW is now the yardstick of The American Dream?
D. Mason
I never met you or your dad but would vote for him over McCain sight unseen.
w vincentz
Good article in (of all tabloids) the NY Daily News.
I’d link it, but I’m not too good at it.
jeff
I keep hearing some rumor that John McCain was a POW in some war. Can anyone confirm this?
Martin
Here’s a site where you can help keep track of his reluctant POW mentions. Has a form to submit additions.
Fledermaus
I fucking called it!
b. hussein canuckistani
Yes, it’s true. John McCain surrendered to Communists.
Calouste
In World War II, 5.7 million Soviet soldiers were captured by the Nazis. 3.3 million of them never came home.
John McCain is becoming an insult to former POWs, veterans and concentration camp survivors everywhere.
thomas
My dad was a WWII POW, captured in France autum ’44. The only time I ever heard him talk about it was when he got together with a fellow POW and they swapped stories. I kept feeding them beers so I could learn something.
I’m a Viet era vet – drafted ’69 never left country, if you think Texas is part of this country. (I have my doubts) I’ve known/still know many Viet vets who have got on with their lives and only talk about their experiences with other vets. It is my feeling that Nixon and his partners (can you say Cheney, Rummy and GHWB) glorified the POWs so they could ignore the rest of our cohort. McPOW used that to carpetbag a congressional seat.
Tsulagi
So McCain was on Leno letting you know he’s America’s #1 POW. It’s getting a little tiring. Devolving a bit into you owe me the presidency because of my past suffering. Like he’s rattling a tin cup labeled POW in your face expecting you to drop your vote into it.
I dunno, anything else he’d like to share from his service? Hightlights? You know, like maybe # of days he didn’t lose an aircraft.
Just Some Fuckhead
The North Vietnamese broke a couple of John McCain’s counting fingers, my friends.
John PM
I think I have the commercial the Democrats should use to continue the house issue while also negating the POW issue:
The commercial would be interspersed with relevant photos or video illustrating the various statements. I do not have a tag line yet, so any input would be appreciated.
Phoebe
Navy guy on McCain’s temper:
blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/08/26/obama-heavy-mccain-known-for-quot-losing-it-quo…