Last night, again, CNN trotted out their venom for this president. Not presidents in general, just this president in particular. The subject, of course, was John McCain. The media never seems to tire of defending McCain. It was over comments Trump made.
@realDonaldTrump
Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier “is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain.” Ken Starr, Former Independent Counsel. He had far worse “stains” than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!
4:46 PM – 16 Mar 2019
@MeghanMcCain
Meghan McCain Retweeted Donald J. Trump
“No one will ever love you the way they loved my father…. I wish I had been given more Saturday’s with him. Maybe spend yours with your family instead of on twitter obsessing over mine?”
5:28 PM – 16 Mar 2019
In this episode of this long running series, Craig Shields opined that whenever people feel compelled to mention the Nazis or slavery in a conversation, they should stop right there. Don’t do it, he said, it will not go well. (never stopped Democrats from mentioning it)
To that firmly made point, Don Lemon chimed in with a remark adding war heroes to it, meaning like McCain. Just don’t do it, Don repeated. April Ryan was sitting there nodding in agreement to Lemon, rolling her eyes a few times shrugging as to why anyone should try to criticize or talk about McCain. Got the message.
But that brings up the point. We cannot mention John McCain in less than glowing terms. He is a war hero, after all, Lemon kept saying. So he was, and that makes him supposedly off limits to any criticism of him or his record.
Shields already said he had major disagreements with McCain because of the McCain-Fiengold Bill on campaign finance reform that attacked free speech. To the suggestion of disagreement, April Ryan rolled her eyes and shook her head back and forth. Nope, apparently one cannot even disagree on policy. No place for that.
Then Don Lemon added like your mother always told you, “don’t speak ill of the dead.” Now that is two reasons you cannot criticize McCain. First, he is a war hero and second, he is now dead. Yep that definitely puts him off the table. Bite your tongue.
So that sets up the scenario, those are the rules! But think about that a minute. Are we not now a generation that is taking issue with all kinds of people for what they did, especially even if they are also war heroes? Yes, we are. We have seen a string of it, tearing down statues and taking names off buildings all because they contributed to an intolerable policy. That means their war record status as a hero is post-facto expunged now.
I thought, you don’t have to look very far. A few examples popped into my head of Robert E Lee, Andrew Jackson and Benedict Arnold. Do they have something in common? (you could pick others too) They were heroes in their own right. Even Benedict Arnold had hero status before going to West Point and then selling out to become a traitor. He’s probably the most stellar example. But we do criticize him. I mean his name is forever smeared as a traitor. Yet he was a formidable soldier who Washington commended.
The point is all these are thoroughly critiqued today as villains of some type. But they were heroes too. Any statues of them would be removed. Whatever good they may have done is now undone by what we know about their actions or tangential support for policies. It doesn’t bother these McCain defenders one bit to bash or condemn those one-time heroes. In fact, it is good to make people aware of their wrongs and associated sins.
Look, I know no one is perfect. That is not my point. Actually, we are all flawed people. We may do great things and still have bad in our lifetime. These days though it is permissible to throw the man’s whole legacy out because of a stain. They are erasing our history the same way. But they will not find anyone perfect. We had founders that owned slaves. Does that blot them out of history? Should we sanitize history with only approved people?
They take the Jefferson Davis statue down and others. All that is good to these people; they endorse more of that cleansing. Except leave John McCain alone. “Leave him alone!”
There is another thing about McCain. Sure there is lots to criticize there. Lucky he never did become president because we know how they are treated — from Nixon to Obama. What about that? They were all still presidents. Yet they are routinely criticized all the time. (especially Republicans) They say but this man, McCain, must be exempt from any criticism. Is that fair? If he would have become president, he would have had criticism from both sides picking on his legacy, much worse than this.
I am getting very sick of how every time someone criticizes McCain, out come his preening guards calling you disrespectful, to remind everyone he is a war hero – End! No one can say a negative word about him. Trump does not follow their special McCain exempt rule.
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