Make-Believe Maverick (long but very interesting)

[JudyJudyJudy]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain/page/1

[GirlsMama]

Wow... I am on page 4 so far. I wish this article could be some how condensed for the people who need most to read it.

[colleen0419]

Wow... I am on page 4 so far. I wish this article could be some how condensed for the people who need most to read it.


Yes, like me who is undecided. I gave up on page 5. I have had a short attention span lately. But everything I read gave me some pause.

[Sunnie]

I'll read it a bit throughout the afternoon, I think.

[Sunnie]

I've just started page two but I want to ask, does the author list his sources? I'm curious. I don't like McCain but this just seems really off the wall. I'd like to know if this is really accurate.

[Sunnie]

huh. I'd be more inclined to take this seriously without the profanity. I know that's odd coming from me but in a piece like this, do you really need to use the words "shit-faced?" Drunk or inebriated would have sufficed.

[Givebac]

If you don't have the time to read the whole thing start at page 6.

[Indigo]

I've just started page two but I want to ask, does the author list his sources? I'm curious. I don't like McCain but this just seems really off the wall. I'd like to know if this is really accurate.

RS has a history of hiring good journalists, and adhering to the proper standards for reporting. I don't know more specifically about this article. Though I have seen many of these things reported/discussed elsewhere.

[Bohemian]

That article just furthers the impression I've held of him. I always thought he's been saying and doing anything just to get ahead. I know politicians do this is general but I think he is above and beyond that and he is severely lacking in character.

[HammBugga]

As Joe Biden said last night (paraphrasing here) McCain is no Maverick. At least about things that average Americans care about.

[irisheyes81]

Well, he might be a maverick...just not in the way he's trying to tell the American people.

[Tweet]

Boho, same here. Not only that, but it shows what I've been following for a long, long time now: he is NOT a moderate! I seriously can't believe people think he is.

This is interesting..I didn't know this.

Once the Vietnamese realized they had captured the man they called the "crown prince," they had every motivation to keep McCain alive. His value as a propaganda tool and bargaining chip was far greater than any military intelligence he could provide, and McCain knew it. "It was hard not to see how pleased the Vietnamese were to have captured an admiral's son," he writes, "and I knew that my father's identity was directly related to my survival." But during the course of his medical treatment, McCain followed through on his offer of military information. Only two weeks after his capture, the North Vietnamese press issued a report — picked up by The New York Times — in which McCain was quoted as saying that the war was "moving to the advantage of North Vietnam and the United States appears to be isolated." He also provided the name of his ship, the number of raids he had flown, his squadron number and the target of his final raid.
_______________________________________________

If true, I could see why he'd do that. Totally. But the way he relates his experience is totally different.

[JudyJudyJudy]

I've read bits of pieces of this in other sources in the past, but I did find it interesting to see it all written down together.

[Sameach]

McCain may or may not be a Maverick. Rolling Stone, however, is undoubtedly a magazine masquerading as a "music periodical" but is really nothing more than a mouthpiece for liberal hack journalists with some major axes to grind.

The highlight of my month is when DH is finished reading the ever-shrinking music sections and I can walk out to the garage and deposit it in the recycling bin where it belongs.

[Sunnie]

You sound just as biased as you proclaim the magazine to be.

[Iconoclast]

O' Rourke is probably one of the finest political journalists and commentators in this country since Hunter Thompson. He is always inciteful and pretty nonpartisan. I take it he didn't write this one (I can't open the link). Rolling Stone is in a unique position. They are free to take whatever editorial standpoint they like, because it won't affect circulation, won't affect advertising, and it won't change their "access" to insiders (as other than Robert Kennedy Jr, I don't think they have any). That makes them, uh, maverick, I think is the best term, lol.

They really have sone some good reporting over the years.

[JudyJudyJudy]

I know the article is long, but I really do wish more people would read it. It is quite interesting and disturbing. Much of it I now remember happening, but I had forgotten about it. Seeing it all being pulled together paints a very dismal picture for this country if McCain wins.

[bebeisa]

That should have been the end of McCain's flying career. "In the Navy, if you crashed one airplane, nine times out of 10 you would lose your wings," says Butler, who, like his former classmate, was shot down and taken prisoner in North Vietnam. Spark "a small international incident" like McCain had? Any other pilot would have "found themselves as the deck officer on a destroyer someplace in a hurry," says Butler.

This is not true. I am not talking about the incident but about the fact that you loose your wings automatically, it is not true.

Still reading...

[bebeisa]

In 1964, while still at the base, McCain began a serious romance with Carol Shepp, a vivacious former model who had just divorced one of his classmates from Annapolis. Commandeering a Navy plane, McCain spent most weekends flying from Meridian to Philadelphia for their dates. They married the following summer.

Meridian is a training base for pilots. It is very common for pilots who are in training to do cross countries to a place of their choosing. As long as it is safe by military standards and meets training needs, those flights are approved.

[bebeisa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire

[bebeisa]

I am on page 5 and I need to go to bed. Do not get me wrong, I think his fame as an asshole is there for a reason. He has a lot of ambition but so far I can sense a lot of bias on this article and the way some things are portrayed are questionable.

FYI, DH was a USMC pilot. This is why I think some of the things that are on the article are just being put in a way to question McCain's character so to me it is very biased. He is still an asshole, very likely was a "Navy brat", but just because the liberal or conservative media put things out there about McCain or Obama does not mean it is necessarily true. JMHO!

[KaraJ]

but so far I can sense a lot of bias on this article and the way some things are portrayed are questionable. I agree. Only I prefer McCain to Obama. Does the article list it's sources? I couldn't find anything.

[bebeisa]

Even those in the military who celebrate McCain's patriotism and sacrifice question why his POW experience has been elevated as his top qualification to be commander in chief. "It took guts to go through that and to come out reasonably intact and able to pick up the pieces of your life and move on," says Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who has known McCain since the 1980s. "It is unquestionably a demonstration of the character of the man. But I don't think that it is a special qualification for being president of the United States. In some respects, I'm not sure that's the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I'm not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn't do something to you. Doesn't do something to you psychologically, doesn't do something to you that might make you a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in your temperament."

With this ITA! I think he has juiced up that storyline way too much!

[bebeisa]

I agree. Only I prefer McCain to Obama. Does the article list it's sources? I couldn't find anything.

I cannot vote for the President due to my location and I think Obama will probably be elected President but he is not St. Obama either. I actually think he is running 4 yrs before his time and the nomination should have gone to Hillary. I just wanted to point out some things that the author presents as facts when it is actually his opinion.

[Sadalsuud]

Even those in the military who celebrate McCain's patriotism and sacrifice question why his POW experience has been elevated as his top qualification to be commander in chief. "It took guts to go through that and to come out reasonably intact and able to pick up the pieces of your life and move on," says Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who has known McCain since the 1980s. "It is unquestionably a demonstration of the character of the man. But I don't think that it is a special qualification for being president of the United States. In some respects, I'm not sure that's the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I'm not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn't do something to you. Doesn't do something to you psychologically, doesn't do something to you that might make you a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in your temperament."
With this ITA! I think he has juiced up that storyline way too much!

I've said this before. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has grown up around Vietnam veterans (my dad and his buddies and most of our neighbors), not only combat veterans but P.O.W's that were prisoners in Vietnam and Laos, but I know that none of the men that I know are fit to be president. They are good men, but they have problems due to their war experiences. Some of them are capable of holding a job/marriage/responsibility and some of them aren't but none of them have any sort of capacity for stress due to their P.T.S.D.

I just think that this, if nothing else, makes him unfit to be president. Of course, I don't agree with him and don't support him anyway, but this just makes me even more worried.

[Iconoclast]

I actually think he is running 4 yrs before his time and the nomination should have gone to Hillary. I just wanted to point out some things that the author presents as facts when it is actually his opinion.

Oh, ITA w/ this. He should have waited, for a number of reasons.