NO CONSERVATIVE DEFENSE, EITHER!
I’ve been sitting on this since about mid-afternoon – a good 4 hours, waiting to see if any CONSERVTIVE blogger would come to John McCain’s rescue. So far, only two, mentioned below have behaved with honor. So far, not Malkin, Hot Air, Pajamas Media, Instapundit, Red State – not one other blog: ZIP NADA ZILCH. No one. So far Drudge has not chosen to run with it. Considering how he dislikes McCain, it won’t be long. There is nothing. The story is fairly recent, but if this were an attack on a beloved conservative figure, the response would be universal and instantaneous. I am very concerned about this. It could be a harbinger of things to come and could also be a measure of McCain’s actual support within ultra conservative spheres. If so, we’re in trouble and the suicide bomber conservatives are going to allow Barack Obama to be elected to prove a point.It is a two bit from a petty, ultra liberal Democrat political hack. The liberal blogs are all over this story, which should be a non-story. I am just a bit taken aback at the abject lack of loyalty our top conservative bloggers have for our GOP nominee. I guess it just proves my point about them, that they don’t give a rip about anything but their petty little agenda.
So far, McCain Blogs have risen to defend Big Mac.
DISGUSTED
Furthermore I am absolutely disgusted with the language and the implications of certain words used and attributed to something John McCain would say of his wife. This is beyond the pale. Maybe the author, Cliff Schecter talks this way to the women in his life, but good, decent, gentile people do not use this language. It is filth. It is abusive of women. It is disgustingly obscene. If my outrage pegs me as a regressive moralistic prude, then so be it. If this were about anyone else, any other conservative, there would be outrage. There would be threats and there would be demands of retractions.
This piece of filth pretending to be biography will be a best seller with Amazon. It is going to do quite a bit of damage if we do not completely denounce it.
Now we know why the MSM started discussing Cindy McCain’s money yesterday, so they could move in for the kill. And our precious conservative bloggers are allowing it. Isn't it rather special how conservative bloggers pick and choose their personal morality based on defending those who are pure conservatives rather than doing what is right, decent and honorable? Let's be honest here. Until one of their "conservative leaders" give the command to defend John McCain and his wife, our precious little Lemming Conservatives are going to sit around and do nothing.
THE CONSERVATIVE SILENCE IS DEAFENING
This is the excerpt (except I am deleting the word) from Raw Story.
“…Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you DELETED." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days….”
Cliff Schecter, billed as “progressive” when in fact he is one of the most liberal bloggers on the web, has a new hit book about John McCain. You’ve probably heard about it by now, and how Raw Story is blowing it up. The author in question worked on the Ned Lamont campaign against Joe Lieberman, if you want to put things into perspective. So far, only MacsMind has come out to defend Big Mac. (according to Memorandum, which is I crock – Memorandum, not MacsMind) Strange, isn’t it?
“…The only problem is that the story is false. This tale first floated up around the 2000 election primary cycle but was quickly knocked down by Cindy herself in an interview in 1999. Further this article - while counting the ups and downs of McCain’s political career and marrage to Cindy makes no mention of the event. You would think if true this story would have been old news by now. It’s doubtful Cliff Schecter got this from anything except the top of his head….”
But – Memorandum has missed:Political By Line
“…I tend to believe personally, and I base this upon looking at photographs of Cindy McCain, I tend to believe that if John McCain would have gotten knocked flat of his back, had he said that to her….”
Exactly. Cindy McCain is a lady. So is John McCain’s mother. If she thought he was calling his wife this, I think his mamma woulda’ done him in!Mac’sMind links to this AZ Central piece from a little over a year ago. (with a bibliography)
“…'I'm Cindy, and I'm an addict'
By the early 1990s, McCain's political rehabilitation seemed complete, but the Keating Five fallout would continue to overshadow his personal life and affect his relationship with the local media.
In August 1994, a group of Valley journalists received an unusual phone call from Jay Smith, McCain's political strategist.
They were offered an exclusive story in exchange for agreeing to certain terms. They would attend individual interview sessions Aug. 19 and sit on the story until Aug. 22. The five journalists - three print reporters, a television reporter and a radio reporter - agreed.
One by one, they went to the McCain home, where they heard an incredible story.
Cindy McCain, 40, told them that she had been a drug addict for three years. From 1989 to 1992, as the Keating Five made headlines, she was addicted to Percocet and Vicodin. Worse, she had stolen pills from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a relief organization that she founded to aid Third World countries.
"More than anything, I wanted to be able to face my children, for them to know I wasn't lying to them," she said at the time. "They're too young to fully understand right now, but someday they will."
Cindy blamed two back surgeries and the Keating Five scandal - a blend of physical and emotional pain - for hooking her on drugs.
Things started to unravel when a Drug Enforcement Administration audit found irregularities in the charity's records, prompting an investigation, Cindy told the reporters.
In 1992, as the Keating affair surfaced again during McCain's run for a second Senate term, Cindy's parents confronted her about her drug use.
What had been clear to Cindy's parents was lost on McCain, who said he had not noticed his wife's addiction.
"I was stunned," McCain said at the time. "Naturally, I felt enormous sadness for Cindy and a certain sense of guilt that I hadn't detected it. I feel very sorry for what she went through, but I'm very proud she was able to come out of it. For her, it was like the Keating affair had been for me, a searing experience, and we both came out stronger. I think it has strengthened our marriage and our overall relationship."
The late Phoenix Gazette political columnist John Kolbe helped break the story.
His Aug. 25, 1994, column was headlined and led with a powerful quote:
"I'm Cindy, and I'm an addict."
Kolbe also drew a straight line between Cindy's drug predicament and the Keating Five stress.
"As the family bookkeeper, she was unable to find records of her reimbursement to Keating for three vacation trips to the Bahamas on Keating's corporate plane," Kolbe wrote. "The apparent lack of reimbursement - which wasn't resolved until the records turned up months later - became a key ethical charge against the senator."
Cindy explained to Kolbe: "It wasn't my fault, but at the time, you couldn't convince me. (Senate Ethics Committee Chairman) Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) even told me it was my fault."
To avoid prosecution on drug charges, she would enter a federal diversion program.
In telling her story, Cindy got choked up when she told of federal drug agents knocking on her door, asking about missing pills.
The reporters were sympathetic.
Cindy had always been physically fragile. She suffered two miscarriages early in her marriage to McCain until doctors determined she was a "DES baby." Cindy's mother had been given the drug diethylstilbestrol during her pregnancy.
During the 1940s and 1950s, DES was thought to prevent miscarriages. Instead, it caused numerous birth defects, including deformed uteruses in female offspring. Doctors finally detected the problem and took special precautions during Cindy's third pregnancy.
Even so, there were long separations because Cindy could not travel while pregnant. Besides, she preferred Arizona to Washington.
Cindy told the reporters that she finally entered The Meadows, a drug-treatment center in Wickenburg, and went to anti-dependency meetings twice a week.
In 1993, she said, a hysterectomy ended the nagging back pain that had driven her to the painkillers.
So why go public a year later?
"If what I say can help just one person to face the problem, it's worthwhile," she said. "They should know it's OK to be scared. It's OK to talk about it. And there's nothing wrong with staying home, carpooling and potty-training a 3-year-old."
Given Cindy's heartfelt confession, the handpicked journalists did what Smith expected. They painted Cindy as the victim, a courageous soldier beating back the devil of drug addiction.
"As surely as John McCain was a casualty of Vietnam, Cindy is a casualty of political life," Kolbe quoted an unnamed "friend" as saying. "But now she is fighting to save herself."
But the select group of reporters had not heard the whole story. It became apparent the next week, as more details came out.
The McCain camp had organized the interviews to head off a more negative story that was pending publication in the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times. That piece centered on a former American Voluntary Medical Team employee who accused Cindy McCain in a lawsuit of ordering him to conceal "improper acts" and "misrepresent facts in a judicial proceeding."
The accuser was Tom Gosinski, whom the charity had fired in 1993. He had tipped the DEA to check out Cindy's organization. He filed the lawsuit as a warning shot. His real allegation was that Cindy McCain had fired him because he "knew too much" about her drug use.
The details were in a 212-page report from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office that was about to become public when McCain arranged the interviews.
Ironically, County Attorney Rick Romley entered the fray at the request of McCain lawyer John Dowd, who alleged that Gosinski was extorting the McCains by offering to settle the case for $250,000.
By asking Romley to investigate, Dowd helped to create a public record that otherwise would not have existed.
The invitation-only interviews were not exactly a suave PR move. By playing favorites with the disclosure of the news, McCain created hard feelings among the Valley journalists who were not invited. They aggressively chased the story.
McCain refused to talk to reporters who were not invited to Cindy's private interviews.
Dowd, who would later defend Gov. Fife Symington, put it plainly to a Republic reporter who called him for comment:
"You're not going to talk to Cindy. You're not going to talk to me. You're not going to talk to anybody associated with us. Have you got the message?"
Then he hung up.
Meanwhile, new allegations were surfacing, feeding the press frenzy for fresh angles, especially in light of McCain's silence.
Gosinski alleged that Cindy had asked him to lie to make it easier for her to adopt a baby from Bangladesh.
Backed up by court documents, the McCains characterized the adoption (from one of Mother Teresa's orphanages) as "proper in every respect." They noted that the adoption probably saved the abandoned infant's life, as her cleft palate would not have allowed her to survive in Bangladesh.
In an Aug. 26, 1994, response to a Phoenix Gazette news article about the adoption, McCain accused the newspaper of trying to "tarnish a story of kindness with the brush of scandal."
"I will accept a great deal in public life, but I cannot accept this," McCain wrote. "I ask the reporters of The Gazette and every reporter to please take a moment to consider whether it is really in the people's interest to make a family - any family - suffer in public because they chose to live some of their happiness and their sorrow in private."
Gosinski's credibility started to slip. In Romley's report, several charity staffers said Gosinski had privately threatened to blackmail Cindy if she ever fired him.
Ultimately, Gosinski's lawsuit was dropped, and he was never prosecuted.
Cindy maintains she has avoided drugs since the scandal, which she candidly revisited in a 1999 Dateline NBC interview.
"I have done good things, and the best thing I've ever done is go into recovery and stay drug-free," she said on the TV show….”
By the early 1990s, McCain's political rehabilitation seemed complete, but the Keating Five fallout would continue to overshadow his personal life and affect his relationship with the local media.
In August 1994, a group of Valley journalists received an unusual phone call from Jay Smith, McCain's political strategist.
They were offered an exclusive story in exchange for agreeing to certain terms. They would attend individual interview sessions Aug. 19 and sit on the story until Aug. 22. The five journalists - three print reporters, a television reporter and a radio reporter - agreed.
One by one, they went to the McCain home, where they heard an incredible story.
Cindy McCain, 40, told them that she had been a drug addict for three years. From 1989 to 1992, as the Keating Five made headlines, she was addicted to Percocet and Vicodin. Worse, she had stolen pills from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a relief organization that she founded to aid Third World countries.
"More than anything, I wanted to be able to face my children, for them to know I wasn't lying to them," she said at the time. "They're too young to fully understand right now, but someday they will."
Cindy blamed two back surgeries and the Keating Five scandal - a blend of physical and emotional pain - for hooking her on drugs.
Things started to unravel when a Drug Enforcement Administration audit found irregularities in the charity's records, prompting an investigation, Cindy told the reporters.
In 1992, as the Keating affair surfaced again during McCain's run for a second Senate term, Cindy's parents confronted her about her drug use.
What had been clear to Cindy's parents was lost on McCain, who said he had not noticed his wife's addiction.
"I was stunned," McCain said at the time. "Naturally, I felt enormous sadness for Cindy and a certain sense of guilt that I hadn't detected it. I feel very sorry for what she went through, but I'm very proud she was able to come out of it. For her, it was like the Keating affair had been for me, a searing experience, and we both came out stronger. I think it has strengthened our marriage and our overall relationship."
The late Phoenix Gazette political columnist John Kolbe helped break the story.
His Aug. 25, 1994, column was headlined and led with a powerful quote:
"I'm Cindy, and I'm an addict."
Kolbe also drew a straight line between Cindy's drug predicament and the Keating Five stress.
"As the family bookkeeper, she was unable to find records of her reimbursement to Keating for three vacation trips to the Bahamas on Keating's corporate plane," Kolbe wrote. "The apparent lack of reimbursement - which wasn't resolved until the records turned up months later - became a key ethical charge against the senator."
Cindy explained to Kolbe: "It wasn't my fault, but at the time, you couldn't convince me. (Senate Ethics Committee Chairman) Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) even told me it was my fault."
To avoid prosecution on drug charges, she would enter a federal diversion program.
In telling her story, Cindy got choked up when she told of federal drug agents knocking on her door, asking about missing pills.
The reporters were sympathetic.
Cindy had always been physically fragile. She suffered two miscarriages early in her marriage to McCain until doctors determined she was a "DES baby." Cindy's mother had been given the drug diethylstilbestrol during her pregnancy.
During the 1940s and 1950s, DES was thought to prevent miscarriages. Instead, it caused numerous birth defects, including deformed uteruses in female offspring. Doctors finally detected the problem and took special precautions during Cindy's third pregnancy.
Even so, there were long separations because Cindy could not travel while pregnant. Besides, she preferred Arizona to Washington.
Cindy told the reporters that she finally entered The Meadows, a drug-treatment center in Wickenburg, and went to anti-dependency meetings twice a week.
In 1993, she said, a hysterectomy ended the nagging back pain that had driven her to the painkillers.
So why go public a year later?
"If what I say can help just one person to face the problem, it's worthwhile," she said. "They should know it's OK to be scared. It's OK to talk about it. And there's nothing wrong with staying home, carpooling and potty-training a 3-year-old."
Given Cindy's heartfelt confession, the handpicked journalists did what Smith expected. They painted Cindy as the victim, a courageous soldier beating back the devil of drug addiction.
"As surely as John McCain was a casualty of Vietnam, Cindy is a casualty of political life," Kolbe quoted an unnamed "friend" as saying. "But now she is fighting to save herself."
But the select group of reporters had not heard the whole story. It became apparent the next week, as more details came out.
The McCain camp had organized the interviews to head off a more negative story that was pending publication in the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times. That piece centered on a former American Voluntary Medical Team employee who accused Cindy McCain in a lawsuit of ordering him to conceal "improper acts" and "misrepresent facts in a judicial proceeding."
The accuser was Tom Gosinski, whom the charity had fired in 1993. He had tipped the DEA to check out Cindy's organization. He filed the lawsuit as a warning shot. His real allegation was that Cindy McCain had fired him because he "knew too much" about her drug use.
The details were in a 212-page report from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office that was about to become public when McCain arranged the interviews.
Ironically, County Attorney Rick Romley entered the fray at the request of McCain lawyer John Dowd, who alleged that Gosinski was extorting the McCains by offering to settle the case for $250,000.
By asking Romley to investigate, Dowd helped to create a public record that otherwise would not have existed.
The invitation-only interviews were not exactly a suave PR move. By playing favorites with the disclosure of the news, McCain created hard feelings among the Valley journalists who were not invited. They aggressively chased the story.
McCain refused to talk to reporters who were not invited to Cindy's private interviews.
Dowd, who would later defend Gov. Fife Symington, put it plainly to a Republic reporter who called him for comment:
"You're not going to talk to Cindy. You're not going to talk to me. You're not going to talk to anybody associated with us. Have you got the message?"
Then he hung up.
Meanwhile, new allegations were surfacing, feeding the press frenzy for fresh angles, especially in light of McCain's silence.
Gosinski alleged that Cindy had asked him to lie to make it easier for her to adopt a baby from Bangladesh.
Backed up by court documents, the McCains characterized the adoption (from one of Mother Teresa's orphanages) as "proper in every respect." They noted that the adoption probably saved the abandoned infant's life, as her cleft palate would not have allowed her to survive in Bangladesh.
In an Aug. 26, 1994, response to a Phoenix Gazette news article about the adoption, McCain accused the newspaper of trying to "tarnish a story of kindness with the brush of scandal."
"I will accept a great deal in public life, but I cannot accept this," McCain wrote. "I ask the reporters of The Gazette and every reporter to please take a moment to consider whether it is really in the people's interest to make a family - any family - suffer in public because they chose to live some of their happiness and their sorrow in private."
Gosinski's credibility started to slip. In Romley's report, several charity staffers said Gosinski had privately threatened to blackmail Cindy if she ever fired him.
Ultimately, Gosinski's lawsuit was dropped, and he was never prosecuted.
Cindy maintains she has avoided drugs since the scandal, which she candidly revisited in a 1999 Dateline NBC interview.
"I have done good things, and the best thing I've ever done is go into recovery and stay drug-free," she said on the TV show….”
Trackposted to DragonLady's World, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate's Cove, The Christian Nationalist, Celebrity Smack, Beagle Scout, Right Voices, The Yankee Sailor, and D equals S, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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