Way to Cheapen the Sacrifice, John

POW Week continues with the latest in exploitive fuckery.

It appears John "Did I Mention I'm a POW?" McLame's staff was serious when they proclaimed they weren't abusing using the POW theme enough.

It turns out being a POW is now considered an excuse for piss-poor taste in music*:

When CNN’s Walter Isaacson confronted John McCain about his professed love of the band of ABBA, which of course was a lame attempt to cater to “disaffected Hillary supporters” as his blogger Michael Goldfarb made clear, McCain (you guessed it) whipped out the trusty ol’ POW card to explain:

“What were you thinking?,” Isaacson asked him, looking incredulous.

“If there is anything I am lacking in, I’ve got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life,” McCain joked. “I’ve got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again.”

Okay. Let's unpack this a bit. McCain wants us to believe that he got stuck in a forty fucking year time warp because he hit a SAM and ended up lodged in the Hanoi Hilton for five and a half years.

Fine. Say it's true. Say that he's so trapped in that moment that four decades hasn't been enough for him to recover and catch up on pop culture.

Taking that as a given, answer me this: Do we really need someone that fucking psychologically damaged as President? The point of personal tragedy, what truly makes it noble and honorable, is not simply surviving it. It's being able to overcome it and become a whole human afterward, complete with the capacity to enjoy the wonderful new things of the present and look forward to a future filled with exciting and novel things. I'm not dissing those who haven't been able to move past the worst moment of their lives. But I am saying that such people are not emotionally healthy enough to take on the extremely stressful and supremely challenging job of POTUS.

And I think that would be a good point - if McCain's claims were true. However, as in so many other areas of his sordid political career, he appears to have lied about this as well:

But, as Spencer Ackerman was quick to point out:

What? McCain was shot down in 1967. ABBA began making music in 1972. Don’t try this sh** on me, McCain! Your POW experience has nothing to do with your Partridgey musical taste.

A hit. A very palpable hit! Once again, McCain goes down in flames. (Why, yes, I can see his crass and raise him one odious pun. Why do you ask?)

As low as that is, can't McCain do us one better? Can't he drag his celebrated status just that much further through the mud? Why yes, yes he can:

Well McCain went on Leno (known to we Letterman fans as "that hump" Leno) and the macro was hit:

Leno: "For a million dollars, how many houses do you have?"

McCain: "Could I just mention to you, Jay, that, at a moment of seriousness. I spent five-and-a-half years in a prison cell. I didn't have a house. I didn't have a kitchen table. I didn't have a table. I didn't have a chair...

Holy. Fucking. Shit. I never thought anyone could so cheapen something as harsh as having been a prisoner of war in Vietnam, but he did it. He not only made it cheaper than a counterfeit imitation Rolex, he exceeded the cheap-drunk "Oh woe is me!" quotient by a factor of 10,000,000,000. Can't you just see his little lip quivering?

I'm not sure how much lower he can go with this, but I've no doubt he'll demonstrate, seeing as how his staff's already gone there when defending his Leno lamentations:

On Morning Joe today, Mika Brzezinski called it “an awkward moment” and Joe Scarborough said it reflected Maureen Dowd’s point that McCain’s “going to the well a bit too often.” But McCain spokesperson Nicole Wallace disagreed, saying, “it’s not a talking point, it’s a fact.” “It’s not thrown out there in anything other than an explanation,” said Wallace.

You know something? It's a damned good thing I sold my beautiful birdseye maple desk when I moved up here. I would've just split it in half hitting my head against it.