Fraudulence of American media.
Democracy Now! (8/27/18)
We host a roundtable discussion on the life and legacy of John McCain, the Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, six-term senator and two-time presidential candidate, who died Saturday at the age of 81 of brain cancer. We speak with Mehdi Hasan, columnist for The Intercept and host of their “Deconstructed” podcast. He’s also host of “UpFront” at Al Jazeera English. He’s been tweeting in response to McCain’s death and wrote a piece last year headlined “Despite What the Press Says, ‘Maverick’ McCain Has a Long and Distinguished Record of Horribleness.”
We are also joined by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, which McCain once referred to as “low-life scum,” and by Norman Solomon, national coordinator of RootsAction, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
Link to Story, Transcript and 23-Minute Video
(Illustration by Seth L. Taylor, 2017)
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John McCain’s Victims Are A Big Part Of His Full Story & Legacy
The lives and deaths of McCain’s victims should not be erased for the sake of sentimentality, nationalism or sanctimony. Not even for a day.
By Kelly Hayes
HuffPo (8/27/18)
Sen. John McCain died on Saturday after a public battle with brain cancer. In the wake of his death, McCain (R-Ariz.) was roundly praised by Democrats and Republicans alike. Many have called McCain a “great American.” CNN characterized the senator as “an abrasive American hero with a twinkle in his eye.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) said he would introduce a resolution to rename the Russell Senate Office Building after McCain. The country’s collective praise song for McCain has been steady since Friday, when it was announced that he would discontinue treatment for his illness.
But for some of us, McCain’s American hero narrative has long fallen flat. Our sentiments, however, are not particularly welcome in the current dialogue. Any attempt to interrupt the chorus of acclaim with reminders of his many misdeeds has been met with swift condemnation. Those naming McCain’s harms have been accused of attacking the senator and the dignity of his family ― as if telling the full, truthful story of his life and career were an insult to the senator and his loved ones. Such moments are part of a longstanding tradition in the United States: At death’s door and beyond, all statesmen are good statesmen. We have seen similar erasures of past sins when former Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan made their final exits, and we will likely see still more of it when war criminals like Henry Kissinger and ex-President George W. Bush shuffle off this mortal coil.
These sentiments are to be expected from Republicans, who seldom feign concern for the people McCain has helped destroy. But the liberal impulse to valorize leaders who have caused great suffering the world over is more troubling and of greater consequence. Democrats often insist that the lives of the oppressed matter ― until discussion of those lives proves inconvenient. …
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
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McCain’s 29-Second ‘Rashomon’ Moment That Defined America’s Coming Crisis
McCain the myth is largely the result of McCain’s brilliant strategy of courting and even flattering reporters.
By Will Bunch
Philly.com ( 8/28/18)
John McCain was maddeningly inconsistent and too often self-serving, and yet compared to the current crew of crooks, he comes off like the blessed love child of Abraham Lincoln and Joan of Arc.
The book is Carson McCullers’ 1940 Southern Gothic tome, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The story is about a deaf-mute man named John Singer who loses his companion and suddenly shows up in a small Southern town, except that the story is even more about the reactions of the various characters — a young woman coming of age, a black doctor angry about racism, the “town drunk,” and others — who pour out their heart and soul and project their own dreams and fears onto McCullers’ protagonist, who cannot hear them or speak back.
In 2018, the American heart is the loneliest hunter of all, and so an increasingly lost and disillusioned nation turned its lonely eyes toward McCain. …
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Jimmy Dore: Craziest Eulogy Of John McCain Comes From Democrat
WTH!?
Liberal civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis Eulogized Long Time Warmonger John McCain As A “Warrior For Peace”.
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After McCain’s Death, A False Claim Resurfaces
By Angelo Fichera
FactCheck.org (8/28/18)
Q: Did John McCain “hide the fact that he ‘accidentally’ killed 134 American sailors”?
A: No. He wasn’t responsible for the fatal 1967 accident aboard the USS Forrestal.
FULL QUESTION
John McCain — Did his plane fire missile and kill U.S. soldiers aboard ship?
FULL ANSWER
In the days following the death of Sen. John McCain on Aug. 25, numerous readers have inquired about a claim that the Arizona Republican was responsible for the deaths of more than 100 sailors aboard the USS Forrestal. He wasn’t.
The recycled falsehood distorts the facts about that July 1967 disaster off the coast of Vietnam, which we wrote about in 2008 when McCain sought the presidency. There is no evidence McCain was responsible for the accident, which claimed 134 lives, injured another 161 and almost killed McCain. …