A few weeks ago I wrote John McCain Shows That He Is Still a Man of Honor
The crowds at his campaigns had been growing vitriolically ugly. He then acted a few times to quell the hatred and fear. It was more than anything else a whistling past the graveyard piece to encourage McCain supporters to tone it down a bit, and on also to hint to those of us on this side to reciprocate and show some appreciation if it happened.
Well I doubt that anyone paid attention to what I wrote, and I was far from the only one writing such pieces, but at least the reporting of such incidents decreased. I don't know whether the tone has actually become more civil at McCain rallies or whether its simply that the reporting of ugliness has lessened.
In any event, I did think that McCain's intervention on those occasions showed that he was concerned and disheartened by such and that he was making a genuine attempt to cool the hotter tempers.
I still think that. I think that McCain wants to be an honorable man.
And I disagree with those who think that honor is like virginity, once lost forever gone.
But I really must say, that however he wants to think of himself, he needs to face the fact that he has now sold his honor for hopes of the presidency.
I don't watch TV and listen to the radio only occasionally. So I haven't seen a lot of McCain ads. But here in Pennsylvania, I recently heard an ad that was so blatantly lying that I really have to retract my opinion that McCain's honor can withstand scrutiny.
All campaign ads are grotesque hyperbole. At this stage in my cynical political life I expect that. Things get taken out of context to be made sound bites and any real message gets lost. But I'm a computer programmer - parsing matters to me; I know what it is and in fine detail how it works. Most campaign ads, at least at the national level, should have some element of interpretive finess so they at least touch reality at some point with an artistic shred of plausible deniability for its implausible intentional message.
This particular ad had none of it. It was a bald face lie. It said (quoting from memory, but the gist is correct) "the liberals **promise** higher taxes on **families** making over forty one thousand dollars a year" (emphasis by asterisk added).
Now certainly I know where this comes from: Obama once voted for a tax measure that would have allowed temporary tax cuts to expire which would have resulted in a higer tax burden on an individual making that amount after deductions. Nowhere in the tax plan Obama has proposed is there such a "promise". Nowhere else have I seen democrats or liberals at large "promise" such a tax increase. And a single earner with no deductions is not a "family".
This is so over the top that I, even with my penchant for parsing down to fine nuance, simply have to class it as a naked lie.
If with my poor attention to such, I encountered one such ad, I have to assume that there are many others.
But I do parse things to a fine nuance. One bare lie - when you know it is a lie - is one too many to still consider yourself honorable.
-- TWZ