Too Much of a Bad Thing - - MoDo scoffs at McCain's POWitis.

[jefferson_dem]

August 24, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Too Much of a Bad Thing
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

My mom did not approve of men who cheated on their wives. She called them “long-tailed rats.”

During the 2000 race, she listened to news reports about John McCain confessing to dalliances that caused his first marriage to fall apart after he came back from his stint as a P.O.W. in Vietnam.

I figured, given her stringent moral standards, that her great affection for McCain would be dimmed.

“So,” I asked her, “what do you think of that?”

“A man who lives in a box for five years can do whatever he wants,” she replied matter-of-factly.

I was startled, but it brought home to me what a powerful get-out-of-jail-free card McCain had earned by not getting out of jail free.

His brutal hiatus in the Hanoi Hilton is one of the most stirring narratives ever told on the presidential trail — a trail full of heroic war stories. It created an enormous credit line of good will with the American people. It also allowed McCain, the errant son of the admiral who was the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific during Vietnam — his jailers dubbed McCain the “Crown Prince” — to give himself some credit.

“He has been preoccupied with escaping the shadow of his father and establishing his own image and identity in the eyes of others,” read a psychiatric evaluation in his medical files. “He feels his experiences and performance as a P.O.W. have finally permitted this to happen.”

The ordeal also gave a more sympathetic cast to his carousing. As Robert Timberg wrote in “John McCain: An American Odyssey,” “What is true is that a number of P.O.W.’s, in those first few years after their release, often acted erratically, their lives pockmarked by drastic mood swings and uncharacteristic behavior before achieving a more mellow equilibrium.” Timberg said Hemingway’s line that people were stronger in the broken places was not always right.

<SNIP>

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/opinion/24dowd.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

[Union Thug]

1. So if a man who lives in a box can do anything he wants...

...then I wonder why so many homeless people are having such a hard time.

Personally, I don't care about McCain's POW status one iota. It doesn't mean a goddamned thing.

[msongs]

2. always use the word adulterer in connection with mcCain even in this case lol nt

[clydefrand]

3. He really goes out of his way to bring up the POW status with

tearful eyes. Can't wait until he's Swiftboated as Kerry was. That's evil, I know, but let me be evil...just once?

[KittyWampus]

4. McCain, by all accounts, was a skirt-chasing, immature schmuck BEFORE being a POW.