As usual, Kossacks are doing terrific online sleuthing, tracking down the whole cross-in-the-dirt story. By tomorrow morning, anyone who wants to know the full story about this will be able to find out anything they could possibly want to know about it right here.
What a waste.
Those research skills could be put to much better purpose!
The problem with making an Issue out of the cross-in-the-sand story is that people will give McCain a lot of slack on anything relating to his experience as a POW. Very few of us have been held prisoner and tortured, and we can't imagine how bad that would feel. If such a prisoner imagined something that comforted him, or later "remembered" something that gave him a sense of peace about what happened, or in fact had an experience that probably isn't so uncommon, given that the cross is a symbol for millions of people, I certainly wouldn't hold it against him.
We run the risk of looking petty, mean, and probably pathologically partisan when we pick on McCain for his tale of the cross in the sand. And here's the thing: no matter how much research you do, you can never prove that it DIDN'T happen.
Researching the facts of his first marriage won't stick either. Lots of Americans are divorced, and probably not too proud of how they treated their first spouses, but consider themselves good spouses now. These people will figure that if Cindy still loves him, he's okay. Republicans were able to accept a divorced and remarried Ronald Reagan, and that was nearly 30 years ago.
So what to do with all that extra research energy? How to satisfy those itchy Internet fingers?
Prove that John McCain is losing his mind.
No one, but no one, wants a senile president.
No one who can relate to losing their memory or mental acuity will want to see that loss in their president.
No one who has sympathy for those who are going through it will want to show their support by electing a senile president.
No Independent wants to take the risk of a senile President.
Racists who can't see themselves voting for a Black man will have to really ask themselves whether they would prefer a senile White president to an incredibly brilliant Black president.
Senility is a deal-killer left, right, and center, coast-to-coast, and in flyover country. There is no pro-senility demographic in the American electorate. And people who can prove that McCain is senile don't look like big bad meanies; they look like sane people trying to save us from an awful mistake.
Prove that McCain is senile and Obama wins.
Here's how to do it:
- Identify several causes of senile dementia. Alzheimer's is one among many.
- Make a chart of the kinds of dementia and their symptoms.
- For each symptom, find a YouTube clip, an interview, a photo or some other kind of documentary evidence that clearly shows McCain exhibiting the symptom. Make a gorgeous chart of links where people can instantly see examples of every symptom you can lay on him.
- Put your chart out everywhere you can. Maybe people will collaborate on it over successive diaries until it is teh awesome. To be even more awesome, make it into a video that can go viral.
And forget about the cross.