McCain sings.**
Joe Klein at Swampland: "This is about as funny as the video President Bush searching under his desk for the missing weapons of mass destruction. I guess, with Imus gone, McCain needed an outlet for his boys room sense of humor."
I didn't think this parody ("Bomb bomb bomb/Bomb bomb Iran") was funny the first time I heard it---way back 25-odd years ago when we all thought we'd learned that you never go to war till you absolutely have to. Contrary to what younger people seem to assume, it's not something McCain made up. But you know what, I've changed my mind.
Some time back I said that even though I'd never vote for McCain we could do worse. What was I thinking? There is no "worse." Unlike Klein, this former South Carolinian thinks this video is hilarious. Though not for the same reasons as McCain's South Carolina "base."
**Whoops! The videotape was removed earlier today "due to use violations" but has since been restored. The story by Declan McCullagh is here at CNET. File that one under things that make you go, "WTF?"
UPDATE. McCain thinks critics of his joke should "get a life." What a trenchant comeback!
[quote begins from The Washington Post, McCain Message to Joke Critics: Get a Life]
"Please, I was talking to some of my old veterans friends," he told reporters. "My response is, Lighten up and get a life."
When reporters asked if the joke was insensitive, McCain said: "Insensitive to what? The Iranians?"
McCain's joke, which was circulating on the Internet, was prompted by an audience question in Murrells Inlet, S.C., about whether he believes the U.S. should send Iran "an airmail message to Tehran."
After his joke, McCain turned serious and said that he agrees with President Bush that the United States must protect Israel from Iran and work to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. McCain has long said that the military option should not be taken off the table but that it should be used only as a last resort.
[quote ends]
I am not one; I love these moments when the candidates forget that they are on the national stage and say what they really think.
The old McCain that moderate Democrats sort of respected? He's evolved to fill the ecological niche on his party's rightward right wing. And the evidence indicates, as Ana Marie Cox comments at Swampland, is that in the process of doing so he has made himself significantly less acceptable to the general public.
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