Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[SoxFan]

As he has me on ignore why don't you ask him what John McCain did to his first wife after she was disfigured and then ask what he called his second wife publicly?

Carol McCain waited for the return of her husband from his Vietnamese captivity for five and a half long years; as McCain idolator David Grann put it in the New Republic, she was "a kind of modern-day Penelope to McCain's Odysseus." She carried her burden with nobility, and resolve, staying faithful to the man she refused to believe she had lost – even in the face of her own tragedy. It was Christmas Eve, 1969, while driving along a snowbound street, that she went crashing into a telephone pole: the impact hurled her through the windshield. She lost her left leg, ruptured her spleen, and went through a long series of agonizingly painful operations. Before the accident, she had been a statuesque beauty who worked as a model; she came out of it with four inches subtracted from her height, broken in body – but not in spirit. Her love for her war hero husband forbade her from letting him know anything of her condition: he knew nothing of the accident, and she refused to write him about it since it would only make his burden heavier.

THE RETURN OF THE INGRATE
Any man would be lucky to have such a fierce, unbending love: she stuck by him, agitating for his release, and living for the day of his return. Her devotion was repaid with rejection. He learned of her accident on the plane home, and wasted no time in getting rid of her. He was soon back to his old tricks of playing the field – "just as he had at the Naval Academy," says Grann – and soon sought a divorce. He openly acknowledges that his behavior was solely responsible for the break-up of his marriage, and seems to glory in the macho role while simultaneously professing at least some sense of remorse: "I think she has reason to be bitter," McCain told one interviewer.

AN ALBATROSS
As for Carol, she avers that "the breakup of our marriage was not caused by my accident or Vietnam or any of those things. I don't know that it might not have happened if John had never been gone. I attribute it more to John turning forty and wanting to be twenty-five again than I do to anything else." This doesn't sound like bitterness; it is more like benevolence, in that it gives her ex-husband the benefit of a doubt and seems to excuse his disloyalty as practically hormonal, or at least fated. A less charitable – and more realistic – appraisal of McCain's motives is that he might have found his physically-impaired spouse more of an albatross than an asset for a man intent on a political career.

THE OPPORTUNIST
Moreover, his choice of a new wife was not exactly inconvenient. As the Phoenix New Times put the question:

"Would United States Senator John McCain be a presidential contender if it weren't for his marriage to Cindy Hensley McCain, heiress to the Hensley liquor fortune? It's doubtful. The senator's wife and – more important – his father-in-law, James Willis Hensley, are very wealthy people."

As a career military man, from a military family, his pay peaked at around $45,000. After retiring in 1980, however, and getting rid of Carol, he swept Cindy Lou Hensley off her feet and moved to Arizona, her home state, "to plunge into the world of politics." While working for his father-in-law, he "was promoting himself as much as he was Budweiser beer. A better job description might have been 'candidate.'" This opportunist on the make was no wild man, sowing his wild oats, but rather a man with a mission, a ruthless man who knew what he wanted – and got it. The New Times put it well: "From Day 1, Hensley money has enabled McCain to be a full-time politician, free from financial concerns." From Day 1 of this campaign, John McCain has posed as a man of character: his supporters have even gone so far as to characterize him as "the Anti-Clinton." This is a lie, and not a white one either. It is the exact opposite of the truth, as his personal history – specifically the way he discarded his first wife like a used-up dish-rag – makes plain as day.

"DIRTY" CAMPAIGNING
Is this "dirty campaigning"? What nonsense! If a man is going to pose as a Hero, a moral exemplar to youth, and a shining knight in armor come to rescue a decadent nation, then he had better measure up to his own standards – or else get out of politics. As the latter is not likely to happen – at least, not voluntarily – those who know the truth about McCain and understand its ominous implications must work to bring this awareness to the general public.