Boys Just Want to Have Fun

Ken Kerr Bio

John McCain’s campaign has made a decidedly sharp turn toward the negative. After getting trounced by Obama’s triumphant European trip and McCain’s inability to rise above 45% in the polls, McCain’s people released a series of video ads designed to attack Obama on his strengths. I guess he wasn’t getting enough traction calling Obama a traitor and blaming him personally for gas prices.

You’ve seen them: Brittany, Paris, Moses. It’s the kind of sophomoric humor that is usually produced and created by snickering high school boys in the locker room. When McCain was asked about the nasty tone of these ads, he replied that he and the boys were “just having some fun.”

When McCain was asked why he was focusing on Obama’s image rather than the issues, he said, “Well, I don’t think it’s negative. I think we are drawing the differences between us.”

“This is a very respectful campaign,’’ McCain said. “I’ve repeated my admiration and respect for Senator Obama. That clip is of Charlton Heston. It’s a movie. It’s a film, movie. So, I really appreciated the movie and I appreciated Charlton Heston’s magnificent acting skills as I saw it, but it’s a movie.’’

Just a movie, and he’s just having a bit of harmless fun, showing that maverick sense of humor, taking that Straight Talk Express on a side trip to Laughsville. McCain said, “We think, it’s got a lot of humor in it, and we’re having fun and enjoying it. And that is what campaigns are going to be like, that’s what every campaign that I have been involved in. I am going to enjoy it . . .”

It amazes me how short McCain’s memory is. In 2000, (the last, “every campaign that I have been involved in“) the Bush Campaign was just having a bit of fun with McCain.

Back then those fun-loving Bush folks called McCain “The Fag Candidate.” Actually they implied McCain was both gay and cheated on his wife. They suggested he had fathered an illegitimate black child and that his wife was a drug addict. Oh, those guys—such cut ups. How did they get any work done with all the hi-jinx?

Once they regained their composure from all the convulsive laughter over those gems, they spread the word that John McCain was unstable, that he returned from 5 1/2 years as a POW in North Vietnam with a screw loose. They asserted that his five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam had driven him insane. (Now, I’m confused. I thought those 5 ½ years made him a hero.) Bush operative, Ted Sampley even called McCain “The Manchurian Candidate.” Sampley went on to accuse McCain of being a “weak-minded coward” and that McCain had escaped death “by collaborating with the enemy.”

According to the New Yorker, that ‘ol prankster, Karl Rove, suggested McCain committed treason as a POW and fathered a child with black prostitute. You’d think that would make McCain hesitant to make the treason claim against Obama—that he’d rather lose a war than lose an election. I guess not. A good gag is a good gag.

I doubt that the Obama Campaign will nasty-it-up Bush/Rove style. But if they do, we can be sure that McCain will laugh it off. After all, they are “just having some fun.”