Dow 36,000 author and former McCain advisor calls Obama the Manchurian Candidate, and accuses him of assaulting the economy. Nate Silver has the details, but this reminded me of the McCain campaign’s Manchurian Candidate nonsense from last fall (stuff that had bubbled up from the crazies periodically, I might note). Quick question- what is up with former McCain advisors chucking out the “Manchurian Candidate” stuff? Have they no clue about the plot of the book? Wikipedia:
Captain Bennett Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw and the rest of their platoon are captured during the Korean War in 1952. They are all brainwashed into believing Shaw saved their lives in combat, for which he receives the Medal of Honor when they return to the United States. Years after the war is over, Marco, now an intelligence officer, begins to have a recurring nightmare in which Shaw murders two of his comrades while being watched by Chinese and Russian officials. When he learns that another platoon member has been having the same dream, he sets out to uncover the mystery.
The Communists intend to use Shaw as a sleeper agent and, using the queen of diamonds in a deck of playing cards as a subconscious trigger, compel him to follow their orders, which he does not remember afterwards. Shaw is controlled by none other than his own politically ambitious and domineering mother, who is working with the Communists in a plot to overthrow the U.S. government.
American military officer captured and held as a prisoner in an Asian land for years, returned to the United States and hailed as a hero, and later on in life he starts to act erratically. I know the first person I think of from the last election is President Obama. How about you?
Seriously. Of course John McCain is not a Manchurian Candidate (an accusation which I think is a pretty nasty and ugly smear) and in fact I believe he is a genuine American hero for his service, but talk about missing the plot. Jeebus.
MikeJ
I knew they’d use "Manchurian candidate" against any dem who ran. Standard Rove tactic of using the best attack on yourself against the other guy.
woody
The main mistake in this interpretation of the Manchurian Candidate is that it is a psychological thriller, when it is in fact an account of the brainwashing of the whole of the US population through the application of electronic media penetration.
That is, it’s not the Manchurian "Candidate," we’re all Manchurian "citizens," simply stationed in front of our screens awaiting the appropriate cue…
Comrade Stuck
That would be like assaulting a starving person with food.
Cris
@Comrade Stuck: Maybe he meant "salting" the economy.
Mmmm, a salt and buttery.
bootlegger
I commented on this same point during the election. If anyone had the background to be a secret commie sleeper wouldn’t it be the guy who the Da Commies held and tortured? And don’t forget that McCain told all under torture.
Cat Lady
Always remember everything they say is projection.
Xanthippas
They ought to check out the recent remake with Denzel Washington as well, in which the "Manchurian" candidate is actually in thrall to American business interests. That sounds a little more persuasive these days.
Zifnab
He’s worse. He sold out knowingly. No one had to brainwash him.
Brick Oven Bill
People mock the wealthy for changing their behavior regarding the proposed 4.6% tax increase on earnings above and beyond $250,000. Personally, I feel that there should be a law that the aggregate taxation (state, local, federal) should be capped at 50%.
But these people mocking the top earners are making themselves look foolish, because their math does not work. The bracket taxable income for those in the 35% bracket is $733.3 billion. Here is the government data. 4.6% of $733.3 billion is only $33 billion.
Obama just spent $400 billion on Fannie-Freddie in the first six weeks of the year that Orszag testified in writing would probably cost us nothing.
Obama burned through twelve years of the theoretical increased tax revenue in six weeks, assuming no Galt Effect. This makes me question the true agenda. I believe that Obama targeted 5% of the population because he wanted to get elected, and we live in a democracy.
valdivia
Nate’s post on the idiot from Dow 36,000 is excellent. Teh stupid continues unabated. Can someone help me here–how come guys like this never get confronted with their idiocy and are allowed and given media space to pontificate even when they were wrong and refuse to admit it?
John Cole
@Zifnab: God damn it. Knock it off. After you get tortured for half a decade in a foreign POW camp, you can come in here and spout off about how you “didn’t sell out.”
Sick of this crap. Sometimes you all are every bit as ugly and partisan as the wingnuts in the comments at Red State.
joe from Lowell
This awesome! They’re using the same rhetoric against Obama that they used against FDR. Think we could get them to start using the term "Bolshie," too?
Somebody refresh my memory: doesn’t "Economic Advisor to the McCain campaign" mean "endorsed the concept that ‘the fundamentals of our economy are strong’ for weeks as the financial markets imploded last Fall?"
Vlad
See, it’s really about the birth certificate! Despite his meticulously-falsified African background, Obama was really born in Shenyang! Through filthy, immoral, unspeakable congress between a minor party official and a yeti he had smuggled in from Tibet for immoral purposes!
Why won’t the Supreme Court save us from his illegal quasi-human rule?
valdivia
In the meantime a republican concedes they have no ideas for the economy and could not care less this is about winning in 2010.
bootlegger
@Brick Oven Bill: It will hopefully "cost us nothing" and perhaps even make us some money. In fact, much of the $3 trillion in bailout funds is in the form of loans that, if we and when we recover, will be investments.
And BOB I think you read the anti-rich sentiment here incorrectly, I don’t think anyone has a problem with people working hard to earn money. It’s when people have money and they didn’t and don’t do jack shit to earn it. That includes the CEOs who ran their companies into the ground and got paid! It’s these folks that I personally would impose a 99% tax on.
KevOH
@bootlegger: I dislike John McCain, but can you honestly say that you would react differently under 5 years of torture? I know I cannot.
SGEW
This is as close as you’ve come to making a reasonable point. Stop while you’re ahead. See, e.g.,:
You are the anti-irony.
Also:
Make them eat cake!
And additionally:
Because they are controlled by the Lizard People. Where have you been?
bootlegger
@John Cole:
True, but we’re right and they’re wrong. Big difference.
bootlegger
@KevOH: Gads, no, of course I’d break. They wouldn’t even have to torture me. It’s their hypocrisy I was commenting on, not McCain’s character.
The Populist
McCain has zero character. He’s another asswipe that only cares about the power and attention he gets from being one of America’s most recognizable politicians.
To think I used to like this fool. Sad…
Face
Holy crap. Look what JMM dug up from Pat McHenry (R — Jackassville):
Shorter–our goal has nothing to do with helping Americans. We only live each day to destroy Democrats. Fuck you, Americans.
Damn.
Brick Oven Bill
That money is teh gone Bootlegger. And represents 6% of Fannie-Freddie’s liabilities, that we are on the hook for. The final figure will be in the trillions.
The federal government yesterday doubled its commitment to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, promising to reimburse the companies for up to $400 billion in losses on their investments in mortgage loans.
The massive expansion of the government backstop is a response to mounting strains on the two companies, officials said.
Max
So why do they call Obama The Manchurian Candidate ? It’s not about making a widely understood cultural reference that actually makes any kind of sense. It’s about using a sneering tone of voice that triggers a Pavlovian response in the rage-filled base.
aimai
At the risk of pissing off our gracious host on what must be a sensitive point John McCain’s heroism was far from unmatched. It was actually matched by basically *all the other POW’s* in his camp, or other ones. Far from being rare, it was quite common. What was rare *among those prisoners* was to break under torture and make a full confession and then retract it. Its true that zifnab, or I, would have broken much sooner I’m sure. But you can bet your boots we wouldn’t have then spent the next forty years profiting off an imagined perfect heroism.
If McCain wants my sympathy for his suffering his has it. If he wants my admiration for his heroism he has that. But I’m damned if he gets a pass for spending the rest of his adult life using his suffering and his heroism (such as it was) to attack and demean others in the same position, or similar, who made different choices when they had the chance to make a choice.
If that’s obscure one of the things I mean is that he allowed Kerry and other comrades in arms to be smeared as cowards for Nixon’s political gain; that he attacked all those who "failed him" and "lost us the war" for not having backed him and made that a base of his political career; and finally that his most famous moment of heroism–the refusal to be repatriated early–was enforced by military protocol and not voluntary at all.
As for me, John McCain’s heroism or lack thereof is neither here nor there. In his adult life as a free man–not under military control–he has shown himself over and over again to be a dishonest adulturer, a cheap hack, and a poltroon willing to sacrifice anything (except money or power) for his angry, unsolaced, ego.
aimai
The Moar You Know
@bootlegger: They teach you now (and I think they did back then as well) to go ahead and tell all. Every man has his breaking point. If they’d done a tenth of what they did to McCain to me I’d be singing like a fucking songbird. Any tune they wanted, anytime. I’m no hero.
I’m willing to give McCain a ration of shit for being in the pocket of big business, for being a hypocrite, as well as being a literal whore, but not for what he went through as a POW.
The Populist
Ugly? C’mon John. At least most of us will talk it out. At Red State either you agree or you are shunned.
I respect McCain’s service to the country. I feel he has sold out as a POLITICIAN because he has changed since losing to Bush in the 2000 primaries.
I can’t respect a man who says he thinks Obama pals around with terrorists and then changes his tune and pretends he never meant it to sound that way. To me, that is hypocrisy. I won’t comment on his reckless nature as a young pilot nor will I disparage his time spent in the Vietcong prisoner camps.
I can and will disparage the man who pretends to have America’s best interest at heart.
Sorry if that seems ugly, but the frustrating nature of the waffling McCain versus the so-called Maverick from the late 90s is infuriating.
MattF
I guess "Manchurian Candidate" is meant to signify "You’re all being fooled and manipulated, things aren’t what they seem to be, all this bad stuff really isn’t happening, and me and my pals in the Senate see through all this and know the real truth about Obama." I wonder if they all really mean this, or whether they just think it’s cool to play with fire.
Tom Hilton
And the guy who actually popularized that smear against McCain was also involved in smearing Kerry. Which doesn’t have much to do with the main point, but is a bit of useful background.
The Grand Panjandrum
No one could have known that mentioning John McCain’s status as a POW in a communist nation would bring out venomous remarks from the commentariat.
The Populist
And now I ask you this: What do you propose that doesn’t bring down the value of my home even further, huh BoB?
I am so fucking tired of supposed ‘adults’ from the right side of the spectrum telling me that homeowners deserve to lose here. Not all do and they deserve a little help. Maybe if the right would engage on positive steps to fix this mess MAYBE we can move forward. Right now NOBODY on the right has anything remotely smart to offer as a solution to this mess. Thus the void the Dems are allowed to operate in.
Sheesh.
valdivia
@Face:
not to be nitpicking/annoying but the quote was dug up by Sargent at his new blog and JMM gives him credit.
John S.
And when McCain sang, I’m sure he gave the VC a lot of actionable intelligence. Or maybe he just told them what they wanted to hear.
And yet the man has the fucking balls to condone "enhanced interrogation", knowing first-hand that the value of what we obtain is worthless.
McCain is both a war hero AND a detestable, opportunistic political hack.
bootlegger
@Brick Oven Bill: Can’t you read your own cites Butthead Bill? It says it is reimbursement for INVESTMENTS which means that the investment is still owned. Now, wether or not it ever rises to its previous value is unknown at this point but if we let it collapse we sure as hell ain’t getting any of it back. Gads man.
John S.
Nope.
Between Joe the Plumber and Sally the Wrecker, the conservatives only have one idea:
JUST JUNK IT!
DougJ
What the world needs now is another Frank Sinatra.
Frank and Angela Lansbury together in a movie, you can’t beat that.
RSA
They must be waiting for the movie. Oh, wait, there have been two… (In the first, I think it’s actually the case that the Manchurian candidate isn’t the same person as the guy who’s been brainwashed. The brainwashed guy is to assassinate a Presidential candidate so that the Vice-Presidential candidate gets the nod. So calling Obama a Manchurian candidate kinda misses the boat. Unless I’m misremembering.)
Dork
Write this down: this is about to become the next 2 news cycles’ "big story". AC LIVES for this kind of publicity. And she hates JM.
Crack has progressed to fissure, and may soon mature into fault line, before the moderates completely jump ship.
Popcorn….check.
camchuck
Isn’t it obvious. Michelle’s bare arms = the Queen of Diamonds. Wingnuts tell me she’s always been the real radical.
Wile E. Quixote
@John Cole
Well if you don’t want to listen to Zifnab spouting off about how he didn’t sell out, how about listening to General John Dramesi.
From the article Make Believe Maverick, Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone magazine,16 October 2008.
Later, in the same article:
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
Seriously.
Anyone you hear of who wants to ‘go Galt’ and quit their jobs to get under the $250K threshold, please have them contact me so I can get a resume to their boss before they resign. The government can take 50% of my take and I’ll be so much happier than being unemployed.
Comrade Stuck
It was from the shared experience of the Vietnam War POW’s that the military changed it’s view on strict name, rank, and serial number machismo and allowed POW’s to be human and to break as ANY human would do under enough torture.
Imagine bearing the pain, despair and loss of dignity that comes with being imprisoned and tortured and add onto to that the humiliation of the inhuman requirement of not being allowed to be human. As bad and wrong as it gets. Kudos for Mccain and others who made something of their lives after enduring that. Even if I disagree with them on just about everything.
bootlegger
@The Moar You Know: Arghh, last time, my point was about his hypocrisy later in life, as aimai so eloquently describes it. They wouldn’t have to torture me, just show me a cheeseburger and I’m singing.
John Cole
@Wile E. Quixote: How long were you tortured as a POW? And should John Kerry have gone to jail for his treason?
4tehlulz
>>Can’t you read your own cites Butthead Bill?
This is the Internet. No one reads their own citations.
Napoleon
@joe from Lowell:
Or maybe "Hebrewizing" Obama’s name like they did to FDR so that people think he maybe Jewish.
@Face:
Funny thing, that didn’t work for them in the election that just passed.
The Populist
To use a famous quote: "He was against torture before he was for it."
Jason
No offense John but McCain wasn’t tortured for half a decade. He was a POW to be sure but he wasn’t tortured the whole time (as he and the Republicans seem to want us to believe). That is not to downplay his experience but McCain acts like the was the only guy this all happened to.
From a guy who was there with McCain…and didn’t talk, says as much as Zifnab:
"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."
And from a former classmate and POW:
"John allows the media to make him out to be the hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals," says Butler. "John was just one of about 600 guys. He was nothing unusual. He was just another POW."
That’s from the Rolling Stone article about McCain in Oct of last year.
Are those two guys being partisan and ugly as the wingnuts at Red State?
Jason
Hah. Someone was faster at the draw than I was ;)
"How long were you tortured as a POW?"
@John Cole: why does that make any difference? The guy is quoting from someone who was there with McCain. Somehow now one has to have been tortured as a POW to quote people who were? WTF.
BongCrosby
DougJ at 35:
No, no — it’s "What the world needs now is a new Frank Sinatra" and/or "what the world needs now is another folk singer…"
I hate it when my mom screws up lyrics, too.
Comrade Stuck
@The Populist:
That was a political decision, among many Mccain AS A POLITICIAN that I disagree with, and I bet he regrets making. It was one amongst many he made to ingratiate himself to the wingnut base of his party for the sake of personal ambition to get elected POTUS . And it was sad to see. Has nothing to do with what happened 40 years ago in the Hanoi Hilton.
KevOH
@Wile E. Quixote: Again, how can any non-POW even begin to understand? McCain broke both his arms when he ejected and the VC used his broken arms to torture him, to this day he cannot raise his arms. I cannot even fucking imagine.
After reading the entire article, I think Dramesi’s point was that status as a POW does not automatically qualify someone to be President.
Dennis-SGMM
I’ve pretty well stopped giving a shit what John McCain did or didn’t do in Viet Nam. That may be because I’ve pretty well stopped giving a shit about what I did or didn’t do in Viet Nam. For me now, it’s a cigar box that holds a couple of medals, a unit patch and pictures of guys whom I vaguely remember and one guy, me, whom I don’t look like anymore. It was a long time ago. I was a different person then and so, I suspect was John McCain. Sad is when you and/or your party take one event from a long life and pretend that it’s the totality of who you are.
joe from Lowell
I know, how about we stop arguing about the fucking Vietnam War before I go on a shooting spree?
Everyone OK with that?
*Hey, did I ever tell you kids about the Sixties?* SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!
bootlegger
@joe from Lowell: Hey did I ever tell you kids about the late Oughts? It was back in late 08 you see, at the start of the Second Great Depression and this crazy cat from Illinois was elected president, of course that was before the dolphins and whales overthrew the government and took over all the tactical nukes. So, as I was sayin’….
Dork
@John Cole: This smacks of the "you’re not a parent, so please don’t tell me how to raise my kids, epecially the part about me punching them all the time" argument. Edit clarification: meaning, someone can know what’s right and wrong w/o actually having been there, done that.
The "unless you’ve been there….." reasoning is crap. I’m not saying we shouldn’t respect his time in camp, but to dismiss any criticism of the man b/c he was camping and we havent is ridiculous.
The Populist
Comrade, never said it did. I don’t use his POW status as a way to judge the man NOW. I see a guy who puts his finger to the wind and runs with it.
One minute, he works with the dems, the next he’s calling them commies and pork lovers.
One minute, he calls Obama a terrorist the next he’s telling his red meat loving audiences to stop doing that.
One minute he loves being bipartisan for the sake of the nation the next he’s whining because the bill wasn’t what HE wanted.
So for me it’s not so much he was held in captivity and tortured (ironic though). For me it’s about a man who claims to have integrity yet does nothing but play politics at every turn.
The Populist
I agree with this. If we can’t ask questions in a respectable way, then we might as well follow a fat, bloated jerkwad and tell him dittos since thinking for oneself is bad.
John Cole
R.E.S.P.E.C.T., find out what it means to me:
Nice.
RSA
Oops, never mind my first comment; I just checked to refresh my memory and I was forgetting some pieces of the movie.
DougJ
Thanks. It’s a good song.
bago
3% tax raise on the money you make after your first quarter million this year = COMMUNISM.!
Kidnapping citizens off of the street and torturing them to death = THE AMERICAN WAY!
I would mention the zeitgeist, but that’s a horrible islamo-fascist euro-leftist kind of word. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.
Comrade Stuck
@The Populist:
Come on now. No one is saying you shouldn’t criticize Mccain. That’s a huge strawman, as is making the claim you were just asking questions. And for the hat trick SM, comparing this site and Cole to Limbaugh and his dittoheads. With 4 you get free tickets to next years CPAC.
Show me the question here?
Chris Andersen
The misuse of "The Manchurian Candidate" is worse than you suggest John. Who is the title character in the book/movie? It’s the right-wing McCarthyite who is scheming to put himself in line for the Presidency.
In other words, "The Manchurian Candidate" is the guy who is most publicly screaming about the possibilities of the Chinese taking over the country.
Michael
Ted Sampley is a weasel. His gripe against McCain and Kerry was that they had the audacity to put a crimp into his ability to raise funds from the families of MIAs in order to fuel his "supersecret, hidden captivity" myth. Kerry and McCain were genuinely instrumental in moving toward normalization, and regularized relationships would make it obvious to all that there were no remaining captives, Chuck Norris movies notwithstanding.
Ever since they flipped his rice bowl upside down, he’s been on a crusade to vilify every aspect their service time, primarily using the anecdotal tales of bitter old NCOs.
Comrade Stuck
And on the subject of torture, right now I’m listening to the Wingnut Caped Crusader against sockalism, SEnator Demented. He’s giving his daily sermon on the evils of earmarks and I expect him to soon tie it in with lesbianization of high school culture in America. Or maybe that will come with the one two wingnut punch of a Coburn relief appearance.
Michael
By the way, as a point of reference – in the book, Condon has the mother as a major weirdo. She came from a conservative household in the upper midwest, was molested repeatedly by her father (and seemed, IIRC, to have romantic affection only for him as she matured), and became a compulsive joiner of every wingnut organization there was (there wasa major JBS tinge to the weirdness).
Then, of course, there was the theme of incest with Raymond.
Condon must’ve been an interesting sort at that time of his life.
Michael
Oh, and I forgot to mention – she slept her way up in every organization she joined.
Dennis-SGMM
@Comrade Stuck:
DeMint must not have heard his august colleague, Sen. Lindsay Graham, explain earmarks:
Proof positive that without cognition there is no cognitive dissonance.
JenJen
Also of note: Kevin Hassett’s bio at the end of the Bloomberg article omits his most famous work, "Dow 36,000," of course.
I imagine had the title of his book appeared in his bio, many readers who got to the end of this shitty piece would laugh out loud.
Zifnab
@John Cole: John, his legislative record – especially in the last few years – has been rather abysmal to troops. He’s flip flopped on torture, only to end up siding with Bush. He came down against the Webb improvements to the GI Bill because it didn’t lock soldiers into the service for long enough. He’s been loudly pro-war and aggressively for saber-rattling with Iran when the military is being strained to the breaking point.
He took the publicity from his years in service and leveraged it into a political career shamelessly and without compunction. Then he used his history again and again in an attempt to silence critics of his foreign policy. He abused his credentials. It doesn’t matter what he went through 40 years ago when he actively sought to dick over the rest of the country 8 months ago.
No one came in with a spin-wheel and eerie background music saying, "Joooohn MccccCaaain… plow more money into military contractor pockets so you can advance your career in the Senate. Backpeddle on torture because it is politically expedient. Lie as often as necessary to sell your agenda." He wasn’t brainwashed into being a giant sack of lying douche. He didn’t grab Sarah Palin out of the back row of obscurity because of five years in the Hanoi Hilton. The Vietcog aren’t making him Twitter.
He’s doing all this because he thinks it’ll better him politically and financially. That makes him way worse than some poor movie character tricked into doing the wrong thing.
McCain is a bastard of his own accord.
Comrade Stuck
@Dennis-SGMM:
via thinkprogress
Or his Amigo Senator Kyle
Robin G.
I’d like some clarification from Zifnab so that we have a fully-informed discussion. When you say "sold out knowingly," do you mean A) gave information to the Soviets knowingly, unlike the Manchurian Candidate, or B) became a pawn for the political power willingly, again unlike the Manchurian Candidate?
From my perspective, I find the analogy of A to be beyond the pale, but the analogy of B to be relatively accurate. Before we go accusing or defending Zifnab, I’d like to know what was meant.
jibeaux
Well, on the plus side it allows them to speculate that the market is going even lower, which presumably means it will rebound any day now. Now if we could just get Bill Kristol to say the market will go lower, that could really be the magic bullet we need to send it shooting on up. Come on, Kristolnacht, you owe my kids a little extra dough in their 529s. Do it for the free market.
Robin G.
Ah, and then as I was typing, Zifnab explained. Thank you.
Barry Soetoro
@Brick Oven Bill:
/sarcasm/Your insight has compelled me to reevaluate my views./sarcasm/
TheHatOnMyCat
Okay, if this has already been said, then please give me credit for it and accuse the other poster of stealing my thoughts … but ….
WTF? Doensn’t everyone know that Manchurian President is just code for Muslim Negro Unconstitutional Terrorist President?
These Republican potatoheads are so far into the insane schtick now, they are making the Schiavo episode look like just another morning with Regis and Kelly.
If they aren’t careful, they are going to get Obama so popular that we’ll repeal the 22nd amendment and make Barack President for Life.
Robin G.
:sigh: Also I meant Vietnamese, not Soviets. Can’t edit post because the iPhone doesn’t seem to like that option.
woody
Say it again!!!
jrg
To read Zifnab write about it, it’s almost as if the McCain campaign was running around questioning people’s patriotism. It’s totally unfair for people to say that McCain might be putting himself before the country – there is no evidence to support that at all.
Now, if McCain had chosen a treasonous redneck with close ties to an Alaskan secessionist party as a running mate, then it would be open season on the motherf*cker, am I right?
woody
Condon’s oeuvre contains some really strange stuff. Cf: The Vertical Smile and Winter Kills
woody
Is there some kind of filter that kicks in the "Your comment is awaiting moderation" switch?
On TP ‘analysis’ kicks the post for the text sting "anal"
Maus
It is not impossible for him to have done a great service to the country and still be a jerk when it comes to other political and family matters. We all understand WHY the guy is a jerk, but there is absolutely no reason why that should give him a free ride when it comes to making atrocious decisions. The inability to distinguish military heroism from lousy leadership skills and faux-maverickism is what makes the GOP an absolute mess. I’m sure we’re not on RedState now and can have the luxury of accepting both ends.
srv
The Republican Party Accidently The Onion.
Marlowe
While the Manchurian Candidate criticism of Obama is typical wingnut idiocy in substance, I’m afraid the critics have a better grounding in the novel/film then you do. (Surprisingly, only a couple of posters allude to this. I, like most people, are primarily referring to the classic Frank Sinatra/Angela Lansbury film version. I have no desire to see the remake and, while I read the novel decades ago, I don’t recall to what extent it differed from the film.) The title of the novel/film does not refer to the brainwashed Laurence Harvey character, but to his stepfather, a right wing senator and vice-presidential candidate (in the film he is played by great character actor James Gregory and is obviously based on Joe McCarthy). He is actually a Chinese agent controlled (like Harvey) by Harvey’s mother; Harvey’s mission is to assassinate the presidential candidate in order to make the stepfather both the new presidential candidate and a hero/martyr in one swoop. By calling Obama a Manchurian Candidate, these critics are essentially accusing him of owing secret allegiance to his Marxixt/Leninist masters and intending to turn the US into, well, western Europe. Actually, too bad they’re wrong.
Comrade Stuck
My original take on what Zifnab originally said was that he was referring to the charge that Mccain as a POW gave comfort and aid to the enemy and broke the military code as it was at that time.
We’ve been down that road on this blog a number of times during the election, when it was clear that some were attempting that as a smear on Mccain, aside from his odious beliefs and actions as a politician and especially as a candidate.
Zifnab seemed to discount this in a later comment that that was his purpose, and I will take him at his word, and offer my apology for misunderstanding. Though not to other commenters who clearly were promoting the "Mccain was a traitor" smear for what happened at the Hanoi Hilton.
Michael
Don’t forget all the Prizzi stuff.
It really jumped the shark on the last one.
Hedley Lamarr
"Seriously. Of course John McCain is not a Manchurian Candidate (an accusation which I think is a pretty nasty and ugly smear) and in fact I believe he is a genuine American hero for his service,…"
Why was he a hero? Because he refused that early release from being a POW? He had to refuse, or else he could never qualify as hero and the chance to make up for earlier foul-ups at the Academy and in repeatedly crashing aircraft. It was the only way he could earn the III (the third) after his name and follow the family’s tradition of honorable military service.
Maus
I don’t necessarily disagree with you there, but the discussion is separate from and irrelevant to why even if all were entirely true the hero-worship should preclude a balanced, nuanced discussion.
Et Tu Brutus?
J. McCain is not a manchurian candidate, merely a spoiled little prince. That being said, if he could just stop acting like a Bi-polar meth mom, he might actually be of some use in staunching the bleeding out of the American Dream.
Phoebe
Marlowe is right.
The Manchurian Candidate is the puppet husband of Angela Lansbury in the original movie [the second movie I did not finish, as it’s horribleness made me run from the room, but it’s very different, plotwise]. I don’t think he’s one of the brainwashed, just easily manipulated and pretty stupid. I’m not even sure if he was in the loop about the assassination, or Raymond’s brainwashing.
But here’s why the morons are still wrong:
A key factor about the Manchurian Candidate was that this guy was posing as Mr. Anti-Commie, when in fact he was controlled by a sort of secret League of Commie Nations, and would have put forth a statist agenda for sure. Kind of like George Bush and the current Republican Party, who screech about socialism, but, under Bush, ran up insane Gov’t debt and had no love for civil liberty.
In fact, one of the heroes of the movie, Shaw’s sweetheart’s dad, explains to Shaw in a flashback that he had once successfully sued the puppet guy for defamation, and donated the money to the A.C.L.U., which infuriated the puppet.
Obama is unlike the puppet guy intellectually or temperamentally, but most importantly he’s not the one railing against socialism as a cover. There is no cover. And the cover is the distinguishing feature of the M.C.
Phoebe
And John McCain is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.