Everyone knows that John McCain has the reputation for being thin-skinned. The therapy-speak people talk about his “having a problem with anger,” and generally trot out something about the trauma of spending so much time incarcerated in a North Vietnamese prison. Leaving aside the sick-making “problem with anger” rhetoric, I have always suspected there might be something to this. So I was pleasantly surprised to see Mr. McCain handle himself with maturity and aplomb when taxed by the inanities of a reporter from The New York Times (pardon the pleonasm). The headlines reporting the incident catered to the clichés: “McCain Flashes Temper at NY TIMES Reporter,” said the Drudge report, which linked to a piece by Michael Calderone on Politico:
John McCain became hostile with the N.Y. Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller on the campaign’s plane today, after the reporter questioned him about a 2004 meeting with John F. Kerry . . .
Calderone links to a video clip of the episode: take of look here. What do you think? I thought McCain was a model of restraint, especially given the hectoring purport and whiny tone of Ms. Bumiller, who I think must have gone to the same elocutionist as Hillary Clinton and Big Nurse.
EB: Okay. Can I ask you about your (pause) Why you’re so angry?
McCain: Pardon me?
EB: Nevermind, nevermind.
Why do candidates put up with this stuff? Anyway, to his credit, Michael Calderone supplied this update to his post:
Readers have fairly noted McCain’s reaction isn’t exactly “hostile,” which I wrote before audio and video were available. It would be more accurate to say he became irritated or annoyed, perhaps.
Quite right. I would only add that the irritation or annoyance were eminently justified by smarmy “gotcha” psychobabble of Ms. E.B.
Well, I suppose the Times is still smarting from its grotesque effort to smear McCain by publishing a front-page story about the affair that the presumptive Republican nominee for President might, just possibly, have had with a lobbyist 8 years ago. McCain and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, instantly denied the allegation. In fact, Ms. Iseman had already denied it in the original Times story, thus rendering the entire exercise completely pointless, but, hey, why let a little thing like the distinction between malicious rumor and actual news bear upon what you put on the front page of your newspaper? On balance, I am happy the Times ran the story: it was so quickly and so widely held up to contempt that I have to feel that some public good came of it.
Our newspaper of record is clearly happy to devote consider resources to discover whom John McCain did not have affair with in the year 2000 or what he didn’t say to John Kerry in 2004. But it betrays a notable lack of curiosity about the friends of Barack Hussein Obama (I know, I know, you aren’t supposed to mention his middle name, but I just can’t help it). Investor’s Business Daily is much livelier on this subject. Just yesterday, for example it published an editorial called “Obama And FARC,” which posed the interesting question why Mr. B. Hussein Obama’s name should turn up on the hard drive of a laptop computer belonging to Raul Reyes, the Colombian warlord and second-in-command of the Marxist-Leninist terror group FARC (short for “Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia“), who was shot in a raid by the Colombian army on March 1. Quite a few interesting tidbits have emerged from that hard drive, including the fact that the group had been attempting to obtain uranium and that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had siphoned some $300 million to them. What caught the eye of the editorialist for IBD was place that B. Hussein O. occupies in the plans and fantasy life of FARC. “In a Feb. 28 letter,” IBD notes,”
FARC chieftain Raul Reyes cheerily reported to his inner circle that he met “two gringos” who assured him “the new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in your compatriots. Obama will not support ‘Plan Colombia’ nor will he sign the TLC (Free Trade Agreement).”
The Victorian travel writer Alexander Kinglake once proposed affixing the notice “Interesting if true” to churches in England. I feel similarly about Mr. Reyes’s “two gringos” and his apparent familiarity with the voting proclivities of BHO. IDB pursues the question further:
Obama hasn’t said a whole lot about Colombia other than to criticize President Bush’s good relations with President Uribe. With this correspondence suggesting that FARC knows what he thinks, maybe the American voters have a right to know what he thinks, too. Five questions come to mind:
1. Is it true Obama would cut off Plan Colombia military aid to our ally, which would serve the terrorist group FARC’s interests?
2. Does Obama still oppose a free trade agreement for Colombia, even though that puts him on the same side as FARC in the debate?
3. Does Obama know or care that one of his staffers or supporters is claiming to disclose his positions in secret meetings with FARC terrorists outside government channels?
4. Can he tell us why his supporters would pass on such information to terrorists, and what he or she could gain from it?
5. Will Obama, as president, treat FARC as the serious terrorists they are, given that they still hold three Americans hostage?
These aren’t idle “gotcha” questions, by the way. Based on his campaign so far, Obama favors meeting and negotiating with rogue leaders without preconditions, passing secret messages to foreign countries at odds with his public positions and tolerating Che-flag wielding leftists among his supporters who advance a radical agenda in his name.
Now that FARC seems to have an inside line to Obama’s campaign, maybe he ought to come tell voters what he really stands for.
I wonder why such interesting questions haven’t occurred to the editors of The New York Times. Why is John McCain’s non-affair with a lobbyist 8 years ago worth a front-page story while a possible link between a Colombia warlord and B.H. Obama is not even worth a mention on page B27? Isn’t that news that’s “fit to print”? Just asking.
[Update: as an awake reader points out, I meant “Colombia” not “Columbia.” Bonus Homerus dormitat.]
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22 Comments
G. M.:This doesn’t surprise me. Obama is a FOGS. No, that isn’t a racial epithet. It’s my little acronym for Friend of George Soros. Soros and his minions have spent years trying to undermine the security and sovereignty of the United States in every way possible.
G. M.
Mar 8, 2008 - 1:50 pm Blog-o-Fascists:Elisabeth Bumiller makes the news
Power Line
New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller doesn’t bother to clue in her readers, but she reports on her own conversation with John McCain yesterday in New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller doesn’t bother to clue in her readers, but she reports on her own conversation with John McCain yesterday in <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/us/politics/08repubs.html?_r=1&re…
Mar 8, 2008 - 2:30 pm Jim McGovern:3 questions:
Mar 8, 2008 - 3:11 pm Cyrus Zal:1. Where in the New York Times article does it declare that McCain had an affir with Vicki Isseman? 2.Where in the letter from the FARC cheiftain does it say that the “two gringos” reporting their opinions about Obama are Obama Staffers -or even supporters? 3.Where in the most recent statement by the Canadian government does it say that Canada could ignore Obama’s campign statements about NAFTA? Please understand-I am here to help; you gain crediblity when you do not distort information to suit your political position.
To answer two of Mr. McGovern’s questions: (1) The article states that some of McCain’s “top advisors” were “convinced the relationship had become romantic.” That is as good as declaring the affair had occurred, without taking direct responsibililty for the declaration. (2) Who else but Mr. Obama’s staffers or other insiders could presume to know how Mr. Obama would vote on such obscure matters as “Plan Columbia” and free trade with Columbia? People not involved with Mr. Obama’s campaign would not even know that Mr. Obama had taken positions on these obscure issues.
Mar 8, 2008 - 3:51 pm da kine:I think you mean “Colombia”.
Mar 8, 2008 - 3:51 pm Thomas Hazlewood:Questions 3 and 4 are gross assumptions, based upon the excerpts you provide. Perhaps he heard some unhappy Clintonites or McCain supporters commiserating. Better to leave unsaid what you may suspect within your offerings.
Such assumptions leave the basis for your article open to a piecemeal attack by singling out the obvious assumptions while ignoring the actual, and real, basic question.
Regards
Mar 8, 2008 - 4:04 pm RJ:My theory is that, with the Samantha Power bad news that came out, the MSM tried to generate a bad news event regarding McCain. They purposely tried to avoid having a day where bad news for a democrat would dominate peoples’ attention. They used Bumiller to try to create bad news so that peoples attention could be split and balanced between the Obama bad news and the McCain bad news.
Mar 8, 2008 - 4:16 pm capitano:My vote for unnamed gringo is Oliver Stone, Hugo Chavez #1 fan and FARC cheerleader. He was in Colombia last Christmas to document Chavez’ heroic negotiation of a hostage release of political prisoners by FARC terrorists. When Chavez PR coup collapsed amid evidence of child abuse of one of the hostages by the FARC captors,
What a guy — gringo extraordinaire.
Mar 8, 2008 - 4:28 pm David Thomson:Let me take a few whacks at these questions:
“1. Where in the New York Times article does it declare that McCain had an affir with Vicki Isseman?”
The New York Times doesn’t explicitly state any such thing. However, it disingenuously makes sure that the reader gets that impression. It’s called having one’s cake and also eating it.
2.Where in the letter from the FARC cheiftain does it say that the “two gringos” reporting their opinions about Obama are Obama Staffers -or even supporters?
Let’s put it this way, these “two gringos” do not sound like John McCain supporters. A conservative Republican is unlikely to knowingly speak to a FARC chieftain and keep him abreast concerning the positions of “Barry” Obama.
“3.Where in the most recent statement by the Canadian government does it say that Canada could ignore Obama’s campign statements about NAFTA? Please understand-I am here to help; you gain crediblity when you do not distort information to suit your political position.”
Oh my goodness, was Austan Goolsbee invited to sit down with Canadian officials to discuss tiddlywinks? Were they interested in what he thought about the chances of the Toronto Raptors winning the NBA championship? Nope, they obviously wanted to speak to him regarding economics matters between the United States and Canada. And since the Obama campaign was pushing a hard anti-NAFTA stance in Ohio—-common sense dictates that Goolsbee was there to quiet the waters.
Mar 8, 2008 - 4:44 pm Beldar:I am emphatically no fan of Sen. Obama’s. But I have a hard time seeing any upside to him in knowingly permitting a staffer, or anyone else over whom he has influence, to communicate with FARC using his name.
By contrast, it seems altogether plausible and likely to me that any number of flim-flam operators, arms merchants, and shady characters might well claim to have connections to him in order to open more possibilities in their discussions with FARC.
It’s certainly fair game to question Sen. Obama closely on matters involving free trade agreements and on matters involving American cooperation with foreign governments in fighting terrorism. But to impute ties between him (or his campaign) and FARC, with only this, seems to me to be pretty wild speculation.
Mar 8, 2008 - 4:50 pm Crimso:“Grabbing hostages is the fashion in which they can finance themselves and try to achieve their goals, which are difficult. I think they are heroic to fight for what they believe in and die for it, as was Castro in the hills of Cuba.”
So, Ollie, if I have a cause I really believe in but no money, you’re okay with my kidnapping you for ransom? You know, as long as I believe in it? Thought not, chickenhostage.
Mar 8, 2008 - 5:02 pm Dave Hardy:While I think Obama would be a disaster, and the NY Times is a disaster, it doesn’t say that the two gringos had any inside info. They could have been two drunken gringos trying to kiss up to the local lefties, assuring them that Hussein will be elected and will love lefty terrorists. The second may be a good prediction, but would not establish any inside info.
Mar 8, 2008 - 6:28 pm Ken Hahn:Bumiller is a political hack who is paid by the New York Times to harass Republicans.
Mar 9, 2008 - 12:15 am Rob Harrison:Let me just say, as the son of a career Navy pilot who knew Sen. McCain both before and after his stay in the Hanoi Hilton, that his “problem with anger” has little to do with that time. In point of fact, by all accounts I’ve heard, his temper was far more violent, volcanic and vicious before his capture than afterward. I’ve known more than one of his fellow officers to say that his time as a POW was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Mar 9, 2008 - 5:50 am William Teach:The Grey Lady has an article today which seems to be “wondering” about McCain’s health, based on his past bouts with cancer. There is a link from the web front page, too: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/us/politics/09mccain.html
Mar 9, 2008 - 6:12 am Right Wing News:Grey Lady Is Just “Wondering” About McCain Getting Cancer Again
Well, when I wrote this Sunday morning, planned to post it in the PM, I was using a baseball comparison, but, seems that Karl at protein wisdom beat me too it. Sigh. Oh, well, let’s use hockey! The Grey Ladies…
Mar 9, 2008 - 11:50 am Django:“Jim McGovern :
3 questions:
1. Where in the New York Times article does it declare that McCain had an affir with Vicki Isseman?”
So far as I know, Jim McGovern does not beat his wife. Although, I must say, myself and others I have spoken to are concerned by his lack of denial here (and elsewhere). I haven’t seen any attempt by Jim McGovern to deny that he beats his wife. What does this silence mean? I will be contacting the local office of the National Organization for Women to hear them speak about this situation. I’m growing increasingly uneasy and disturbed by McGovern’s ominous silence.
Mar 9, 2008 - 3:45 pm amr:Why is it that the media will not even give Mr. Obama a question about this to allow him to deny that a member of his staff or any associates have contracted FARC. Questions along those lines are not rare when President Bush and other administration officials are being questioned. I would think that it would be in Mr. Obama’s best interests to be given a chance to deny any such conversation took place. And he had better get used to it if he becomes President.
Mar 9, 2008 - 3:51 pm MLeal:For the sake of the original text in Spanish, it’s not “two gringos”, but “the gringos” (los gringos); not “your compatriots”, but “their [gringos’] compatriots (sus compatriotas.)
Mar 9, 2008 - 5:26 pm Peg C.:Excellent post, Roger. You’re doing the work we only wish the MSM would do. Emailed this to the entire family.
What is really sad is when I see the NYT front-page in Starbuck’s or elsewhere and simply assume everything on it is a lie. Their credibility only wishes it were in the toilet - that would be an improvement.
Mar 10, 2008 - 7:09 am B Dubya:Perhaps this little predicament is only encountered by left wing Democrat Illinois empty suits or Massachusetts drunks sitting in the US Senate, who aspire to the Presidency. Seems to me that Ted Kennedy’s forays into treason with Leonid Breshnev in the early 80’s have a lot in common with Mr. Obama’s “outreach” to the FARC terroist/gangster/brigands (if only they were muslims, then they would be canonized by the NYT).
Mar 10, 2008 - 11:28 am Right in Seattle:Sen. B. H. Obama and ties to Columbian Terrorists?
Here’s a story both Main Scream Media and Alternative Media, though Investor’s Business Daily and Roger Kimball are paying attention, are pretty much ignoring, while all the attention is on the rantings of Sen. B. Hussein Obama’s insane spiritual…
Mar 14, 2008 - 1:25 pm