Taking in all the McCain tributes today, I noticed how many of them feature his response to the red-sweatered woman in the above clip from the 2008 presidential campaign. This occurred at a "town hall" just a piece down I-35 from where I live, and I distinctly remember not being favorably impressed at the time. Asked a question by a manifest crackpot who, after stumbling around a bit, settles finally on the epithet "Ay-rab" to describe Obama, McCain says, "No ma'am, he's a decent family man and citizen with whom I just happen to disagree"--the apparent implication being that the Venn diagrams of "Arabs" and "decent family men who are also American citizens" do not overlap.
If you wanted to cut McCain some slack--and I do--you might want to consider, besides the more famous interaction with the woman, the one from the same town hall that begins the above clip. The man says he's "scared" of Obama, and McCain replies that there is no cause for that, Obama is a decent man. The crowd expresses its disappointment--with McCain's answer. Then later, same forum, the woman in the red sweater says something similar, and McCain, probably getting sick of this crap, repeats the line about Obama's decency, which isn't now right on point considering exactly what the woman said. But, really, notwithstanding her assurances that she'd read up on Obama, she didn't have anything to say except a sort of generalized complaint that, at a high level, amounted to Obama being--she stammered and paused before settling on "Ay-rab" because she didn't know how to put it--different, not one of us, a scary other, (a colored guy). Same general complaint as the fellow who said "cohorts" when he meant "cavorts," and she got the same general rebuke.
This time, McCain's answer elicited some tepid applause. It's as if the attendees had given up on their candidate being an asshole. They'd have to wait eight years for that.
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