If He Really Wanted To Scare'em, He Would Have Named Big Daddy Lipscomb ...

Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain likes to talk about his military service.

He's made a career of it.

It's not cool when other people talk about his military service, that it doesn't qualify him for office, or that it is full of potholes and hype.

In the "Irony Department", shortly after the manufactured outrage over General Wesley Clark's comments, the Stumblin' Bumblin' McCain campaign put out a new ad, leaning heavily on - you guessed it - his military service.

John McCain TV Ad: Love

You should get a laugh, with the attempt to paint Obama with "The Summer of Love", complete with Haight Ashbury, tie-dye footage, but the kicker in this offering is the money line - "Don't hope for a better life, vote for one ..."

And, with his General chief Economic Advisor calling us all "whiners", I suppose we can't whine about hoping to have a better life.

We are, if we follow the directives of the SB McCain campaign ads, to be silently hopeless.

Well, Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain put out his own version of hopelessness the other day.

And the spin isn't a good one.

He's either losing his memory, getting confused ...

Or, it was outright, nauseating, obsequious pandering

We speak of this;

McCain Exploits the Steelers. Now the Man Has Gone Too Far

Here's the deal. John McCain tells a story from time to time (it's in his 1999 memoir "Faith of My Fathers," for example) about how under pressure as a POW in Vietnam to give up vital information, McCain pretended to hand over the names of his squadron mates by reciting the starting lineup of the Green Bay Packers. The kicker was McCain's CO, Ray Nitschke.

It's an incredibly admirable story and it reminds you that underneath the artifice of campaigns that we spend so much time trying to peel away here at MoJoBlog, there are men and women of character who seek to lead the country.

But John McCain has thrown this story into the political ring. In an interview with KDKA-TV, a Pittsburgh CBS affiliate, McCain professed his boyhood love for the Steelers and retold the charming POW story. But this time he inserted the Steelers where the Packers had been.

Any sports fan will tell you, that's just not cool.

On Countdown last night, "More Lies About Viet Nam From McCain's Double Talk Express"

(You can go to the full interview here)

What makes this an incredible faux pas, the Pittsburgh Steelers of 1967, when SB John was shot down and captured, sucked.

Yet, in the interview, McCain emphasized the "defensive line", inferring, no doubt, putting into the minds of the viewers, the infamous, Super Bowl-winning Steel Curtain (which, of course, didn't come to fame until the early 70's, long after McCain was released and out of Viet Nam).

Yet, he's on the record, multiple times, in his book, in the television movie of his book, interviews, etc, of telling this story, as noted above, using the powerhouse Green Bay Packers of the day.

So, if we follow his strategy, next time he's in Chicago, it will be he names the Cubs? ... Kansas City, the Chiefs? ... Boston, the Red Sox or Celtics? ... Hell, why not go for it all, and blurt out the "Murderers Row" New York Yankees?

Surely, things he, or his campaign could have Googled.

If the campaign wants to salvage this, they can fall back on the "he is aware of the internet".

Good for him - that means he's going to be aware what a jackass he's looking like for pulling this stunt.

But for my money, this is a loser, Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain blew it, back in '67".

If he really wanted to scare-the-shit out of his captors, he should have named Big Daddy Lipscomb.






















Or, Chuck Bednarik