Dan Abrams has uncovered a video of John McCain saying…
“I really didn’t love America until I was deprived of her company.”
This has the potential to upend this campaign. Given the criticism of Michelle Obama’s remarks about pride, how can the right still press the patriotism of the Democratic candidate’s wife when the Republican candidate himself has made remarks that are arguably much worse?
The quote of McCain came from an interview with Sean Hannity:
Hannity: You spent two years of this five-and-a-half-year period in solitary confinement. What does that do to a person, to spend that much time in solitary confinement?
McCain: I think it makes you a better person. Obviously, it makes you love America. I really didn’t love America until I was deprived of her company, but probably the most important thing about it, Sean, is that I was privileged to have the opportunity to serve in the company of heroes.
Is anyone surprised that Hannity didn’t challenge McCain’s statement?
It doesn’t matter what McCain meant to say in these comments. What matters is that he and his surrogates have to cease their despicable slander of Michelle Obama’s patriotism. After all, If Cindy McCain can get away with saying, “All I know is that I have always been proud of my country,” can’t Mrs. Obama just as rightly say, “All I know is that I have never stolen from a charity to satisfy my drug habit.”
This crap has to stop. And if there is a silver lining to the new McCain dialog, it is that this might lead to the end of these childish attacks.
John McCain, he really didn’t love America? Well I’d like to know what the hell he didn’t like about it. Was he drafted? What was it that he didn’t like? That it was mean, racist, piggish, WHAT?
Oh this drove me nuts. Not to mention Lars and Brad, do they bathe in kool-aid? What the hell.
Brad says that when he visits the middle east he is happy to be back in America ( the US ). Jesus Christ, do these guys sleep with a flag let alone wave the thing for all to see?
Lars was more telling than anyone, and it is of little wonder that he is on the radio. That kind of venom still doesn’t fly on TV, even in the age of Bill O’Really.
Further more, Lars and Brad do not understand anything of this world because none of it is happening to them. They are not poor, therefor, poverty isn’t happening. They are not sick, therefor nobody else is. They are not unemployed, therefor everyone is able to work.
And in closing they have not been discriminated against therefor nobody has. And in that shallow thinking they could not be any more wrong. Michelle and Obama may be affluent, but they know. Oh they know. It isn’t as though they are black republicans. The same holds true with their mind set. Like any neo-conservative, if it isn’t happening to them, it isn’t happening. It is astounding how shallow the pond is when looking at it from the mindset of the right.
-=t=-
Neither of the Repubs even bothered to address the comment directly. Brad said simply that it wasn’t the same thing, without explaing why. Lars went totally off track, bringing up Bill Ayres and any other old smear he could think of to avoid the subject at hand.
It was pretty funny, actually.
“I didn’t really love America until I was deprived of her company.” Ever hear people say that you don’t really know what you have until it’s gone or all the people who come back from some overseas hellhole and gain an entirely new appreciation of what America is? That’s exactly what McCain said. Basically, he didn’t know just how great America was until he suffered like that overseas.
This is a completely different remark from what Michelle Obama said….night and day. How exactly can you not love America and yet go fight for her overseas? McCain was a patriot before the war and was even more so afterwards. Michelle Obama has never been a patriot.
If you think the remarks are completely different, you are seriously deluding yourself. McCain did not say that he loved America more, or developed a greater appreciation, after his captivity. He said he “never really loved America…”
I think both he and Obama merely expressed themselves imprecisely, but there is no difference in the manner in which they did so.
And if Michelle Obama did not love her country before, would she have spent her life working with her fellow citizens on behalf of the country and its people? McCain has no monopoly on patriotism, and it is hypocritical and disingenuous to disparage others on those grounds. Anyone who really believes that Barack and Michelle Obama are not patriotic is hopelessly delusional and just plain ignorant.
Michelle Obama is responsible for establishing her patriotism through her words and actions. Barack Obama wants to help poor people but I’ve never heard him say anything particularly patriotic. How does the redistribution of wealth express patriotism?
Of course, McCain has loved the country for 50 years and Michelle Obama has only loved it a few months. So I don’t see how she can be called a patriot, particularly when she and hubby sat in an America-hating church for 20 years.
So Obama is running for president because he hates America?
Boy, you people make me laugh. Thanks for stopping by.
Thisis what happens when you don’t get the full facts. Michelle said “She was REALLY proud of her country”. The word everyone seems to have conveniently removed is REALLY. She was always proud of her country and now is even more proud.
McCain didn’t “REALLY love his country”. Being proud and loving it are two different. McCain did not love his country period! And yet he now wants to be the President of a country he did not love.
But that is not even the issue. The issue is the double-standards of McCain and the Republican Party. They continued to bombard Michelle despite knowing that McCain himself had made such a comments. What did they think that this would never come out so they could quite happily continue? Same thing with the so called “Whitey” tape. They know there is no such tape, but they also know that there are some american people out there who are quite gullible and will believe anything they hear.
I’m hardly a right-winger and I tend to like Dan Abrams. However, in this case I have to beg to differ with him because the contexts are different.
Having served myself in the military (though my experience pales to McCain’s) I can appreciate how Americans take much for granted until they travel overseas and have to serve their country. More than once I wanted to kiss the ground when I got back stateside.
That’s different than Michelle’s comment which, at best, is narcissistic and, at worst, has nasty racial undertones which turn Obama’s claims to uniting this nation on their head.
Personally, I tend to like Obama but the man’s surrounded himself with people who I have a hard time stomaching. Unfortunately, I don’t care for his wife’s attitude as expressed by several of her public comments. Hopefully, she can learn to smile and bite her lip to cover up her seething attitude.
I never really loved the USA until I visited it.
I’m a Brit.
as i read these blogs i am amazed at what the american people will dismiss and take for granted..if any of you Obama lovers had a big company and wanted the most for your money from a CEO would you not look at his experience and qualifications??..and buy the way..”birds of a feather stick together” if you get my meaning..geez..have you not sen in Ohio and recently how tipical he is..he goes back on his word on almost everything..he has no record of reaching accross the isle..and is recorded by his own party as being one of the most liberal senators on record..do you really want a man of his caliber to be in the presidents chair??if so..this election is not your biggest problem
You want experience? Like that of all the seasoned professionals in the Bush administration that have run this economy into the ground, made us international pariahs, and got us stuck in the middle of a civil war that does nothing for our national security?
I want judgment, principles and the values that Americans revere. There are plenty of people who can carry out the agenda of president who brings that to the office.
Boy how you people talk about hypocrisy is absolutely COMICAL.
Obama writes an editorial in the NY times last week, but this week the NY Times refuses to publish McCain’s op-ed because they don’t like his stance on the war.
It doesn’t get more hypocritical than that.
The left wing media is so overwhelmingly biased its unbelievable but all you people do is bash Hannity and Fox News. You never once say how biased the NY times is, or how biased CNN is. You are content to sit in your tiny little box world and whenever anyone says anything you disagree with you mockingly call them idiots.
I have news for you, you are just as idiotic as anyone who is biased on the right.
Get over yourselves.
OK, I’ll say how biased the NYT and CNN is – very, very biased to the right, like most big corporations.
In case you didn’t notice, I am excoriating both sides who use language out of context to slander someone. Your obvious bias keeps you blind to that fact.
And speaking of facts, the Times did not reject McCain’s op-ed because “they don’t like his stance on the war.” They rejected it because it neither responded to Obama’s op-ed nor offered anything of its own that was newsworthy. Newspapers are not obligated to give free space to candidates for self-promotion. That’s all McCain’s article was.