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“I couldn’t agree with you more than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most God-loving, most patriotic part of America.”
John McCain
10/21/2008
“I couldn’t agree with you more than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most God-loving, most patriotic part of America.”
John McCain
10/21/2008
6 comments
This just in: John Murtha is an idiot.
Sure, though I think it would have been comparable if murtha said that his area was /the most/ racist part of the country.
Why would Murtha say that? It’s a stupid, ridiculous thing to say about people in the area, let alone his own district. There’s no way to justify saying “[area X] is the most racist / really racist” because there’s no way to prove it. Murtha is an ignorant fool and shows his ignorance here again.
Yes, let us all not support people who make ridiculous unprovable generalizations about certain regions of the country
While it’s hard to make a superlative (and Murtha didn’t), certainly some areas are more racist than others (having been to the southeast twice in the last year, I would assert that). In context, you could do a survey (as has been done) around the country and ask “would you ever vote for a black president”. I believe somewhere around 6% of the country would say no, though I’m not quite sure where I saw that. That’s not a proof of a racism, but I think it’s highly correlated, and I think racism has played a role in the votes in western PA and WV more than in other states.
Politically stupid? Absolutely. Untrue? Possibly, but it’s not as nebulous as “pro-America” or “the real America”. Saying things that are true that people don’t want to hear sounds like a maverick straight-talk kind of thing to me- remember those?
More importantly, for me, is this: Murtha said a generalization that was politically dumb in order to try to explain a phenomenon. McCain made a superlative about a determination about which part of the country was most patriotic in order to pander for votes.
The problem is that they’re not the same thing. You can’t defend what Murtha said by attacking what McCain said. Both were stupid comments but the fallout is different, in my opinion. Murtha insulted all of his constituents with his statement. McCain’s backhanded insult is certainly damaging but really only in those areas predisposed to vote for Obama. I’m not defending what McCain said, it was stupid, but I don’t think it’s anywhere as politically damaging as what Murtha said.
I don’t care about either candidate being damaged, I don’t care about the political fallout, I’m just exploring the semantics and similarities and differences between the statements. There are straight-talk things that are politically damaging that John McCain has said that I completely support (e.g. things he said during the primaries about torture). I couldn’t care less if he’s only supporting areas that will support Obama, he’s running for the job to run the whole US. If Murtha’s constituents want to be offended and vote him out, that’s fine by me, though I read an AP article with anecdotal evidence that there wasn’t too much outrage there, but I can’t find the link.
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