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Fighting with Jughead
By David Glenn Cox
The mainstream media attempts to frame every issue with a right-wing bias. For example, focusing on the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama, every aspect, all the minutia of the campaign, is digested and regurgitated with Republican spin. CNN discovers such revelations as Democratic voters in Oregon are more liberal in their opinions than those in Kentucky. Wow, how did they figure this out? That’s amazing research. Hillary Clinton won the Ohio primary, leading the media to deduce, why can’t Obama carry the white vote?
Never mind that John Kerry didn’t carry Ohio either, and according to the news media's research, he’s white! But wait, Hillary Clinton beat Obama in Texas by 10%! Never mind that Bush won Texas by almost three to one over Kerry. The argument is framed that Obama is a weak candidate, as only his negatives are counted and the positives are discounted. Obama could easily carry Louisiana, Georgia, North and South Carolina and even Virginia this November. The media sets the goal posts in states that the Democrats don’t traditionally win anyway.
Meanwhile, John McCain is shown to the public as just one step away from Mount Rushmore, one part Goldwater, one part Lincoln and one part Reagan. His resemblance to the gipper might be deduced from his lack of intelligence and grasp of the issues. An automaton, totally lacking original ideas, a presenter of what he’s been told, not a generator of any original thought. A better caricature might be one part Bush, one part Quayle, and one part Jughead.
I have always used the Dan Quayle scale to judge politicians. It is a difficult task to live in the media spotlight and not to make a gaffe here or there. The average man or woman off the street would easily be made to look foolish. This is the Quayle scale. If you are raised from birth being given media training, sent to the finest private schools, and your family owns a string of media outlets to guarantee you at least some favorable opinions in the press, and yet you get tripped up by the spelling of potato, you are indeed an idiot, a moron, and a class-A jughead.
John Jughead McCain wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he married someone who was. His wife, an heiress to the largest Anheuser Bush fortune held outside the beer family, smoothed McCain’s political path. When the Keating five were being investigated by Congress over the Savings and Loan scandal, Jughead sat there piously, as if he was not involved. Those transactions had been made by his wife and his father-in-law, he maintained. The media soft-peddled his involvement as the three frogs sat in the network board rooms saying, “Bud” “Wie” “Ser” “Adver” Tiesing” “Dollars.”
McCain is compared to Eisenhower as a great war hero, come down from Olympus to lead us, but Eisenhower lead successful armies across Europe and McCain only jumped out of a burning airplane. He has built a reputation as a maverick politician from working with those outside his own party. Maybe that's because he is so principled, or maybe because he is so unpopular in his own party. He has taken a principled stand against pork in Congressional spending bills, while other Senators have been busy bringing home hundreds of millions of dollars for their citizens with new schools, infrastructure improvements, highways and government facilities. Arizona residents can say with pride, John McCain hasn’t brought us one dollar into this state! Life is just easier that way, nothing to fight for, nothing to fight against really. Just vote no, make a speech for the cameras and now it’s Miller, ah, I mean Bud time.
He is a poser, a great pretender, an empty suit, a man who has more enemies than friends. While the media trumpet the fact that Clinton trounced Obama with 67% of the vote in West Virginia, they neglect to mention that John Jughead McCain barely carried three quarters of the Republican vote while running unopposed. While the media focus on the relationship between Obama and Reverend Wright, they ignore another simmering feud, between George W. Bush and Jughead. In 2000 it was the Bush Campaign who torpedoed Juggy in South Carolina with allegations that McCain had a black love child.
McCain took his lumps quietly. But even when Bush was at the zenith of popularity, McCain, while voting one way, spoke of Bush another. Saying, among other things, that the war was right but it was just how it was being handled that was wrong. This time around Bush endorsed Jughead and bade him good luck. Even as McCain has tried to keep himself close to the President, but not too close, the White House has been busy throwing Jughead anchors. The President made his now famous appeasement remarks while in Israel. McCain rushed to defend the White House and Obama took them both of them to task. And how does the White House respond? (Cricket sounds) You’re on your own there, Jughead!
Earlier in the week, Jughead McCain took his principled politics to south Florida to express his solidarity with Cuban Americans. He condemned Obama’s statement that he would hold talks with the Castro government. Then, even more than that, promised that a McCain administration would do something about Castro’s Cuba. Just a thought, but-- like what, Jughead?
Let’s see, the fifty year embargo hasn’t worked, and McCain voted to normalize trade relations with the same communists who shot him out of the skies over Vietnam. But in South Florida he’s promising what? To invade? Less than twenty-four hours later the Bush administration announces that they are relaxing regulations and will now allow Americans to send cell phones to Cuba. Here Jughead, catch! Here’s another anchor for you!
The media frames the issue as, will blue-collar whites vote for Obama? The better question is, will Republicans, disgusted and disenchanted with Bush, get up off the couch to vote for a man that most of them despise even more than Bush? The Republican Party has been splintered all to hell by the President and will not be reunited under Jughead McCain. The evangelicals don’t like him and the conservatives don’t trust him, and in this one case, I couldn’t agree with them more.
By a wide plurality, Americans list the economy as the most important issue. What does Jughead say, “That’s not my strong suit.” Could you imagine the media hoopla if Clinton or Obama had made such a statement in public? (Potato, p-o-t-a-t-o) McCain made his now-famous, “We will stay in Iraq for a hundred years if we need to” statement. Republicans began a campaign of claiming that he never said that, Red State.com called it an Obama lie. But I saw it myself on YouTube, I heard it with my own ears. Then, like Iraq’s WMD’s, the story changed and became that they quoted him out of context, that we will stay in Iraq a hundred years provided our servicemen aren’t being injured.
That’s much better, we will stay for a hundred years provided our people aren’t being injured. But why would we need to stay a hundred years then? I mean, if they weren’t being injured that is, it’s still damn expensive! It’s still a hell of an imposition on our military families. McCain’s position is that we will stay a hundred years as long as the military has nothing to do! (Jughead, J-u-g-h-e-a-d) He has also identified Vladimir Putin as the President of Germany.
McCain favors making the Bush tax cuts permanent and will bring us victory in Iraq by getting tough and talking tough because foreign policy is his strength. He will get tough by not talking to Iran and by not talking to Venezuela or Cuba, and by not talking to Syria even if the Israelis do. (Anchor, A-n-c-h-o-r) McCain won the nomination because of the fractured state of the Republican Party. The shiniest rock in a muddy, Republican pond, among a Mormon, a philanderer, and a TV actor. He stands before us, presented to us as a war hero, a statesman, a great leader. A man who thinks two I-pods would be Eyes pod.
He's a cardboard cutout with the Republican noise machine only half-heartedly behind him. As Gore Vidal has said, in his view McCain is “a goddamned fool. His head rattles as he walks.” This man the media presents as a credible candidate, a man who couldn’t beat George W. Bush for the Republican nomination. And probably the real reason Hillary Clinton hangs on, since winning the Democratic nomination will be the toughest contest to win the White House. The McCain campaign is fatally flawed by the great weakness that lies between the candidate’s tonsils and his lips. If this week was any indication of the fall campaign, then Obama need only wait for Jughead to speak and then to take batting practice, leaving the fighting with Jughead to the McCain campaign.
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