First. Shame on NBC. On their 'short clips' of the tonight show they fail to include the part that a great number of us wanted to see: The question and answer about the houses. (I can embed the short clips, not the full episodes.)
The following, I did find. Hopefully, it stays up on YouTube. The comment in question is right at the beginning:
Now, I am not going to post the whole thing. If you would like, you can visit the NBC site and view the entire interview here.
The reason you may want to do this is the context. The comment in question came just after the break. McCain had been joking around the entire time before this about all sorts of subjects including his age. Coming out of the break he decided to get serious by using the POW line in response to a question that he has failed, repeatedly, to accurately answer.
Now this was actually a logical point in the interview to get serious. Which leads me to question the timing of when the question was posed.
Exactly how much Jay and his staff coordinated the timing of the question with McCain and his staff? Seems rather convenient that McCain gets to try to slough off the question. Even worse, with that same POW thing he pulls out whenever he gets in trouble. It's like his own personal "9/11".
Sample interview:
Why does your economic plan make no sense for working folks Senator?
Well....You know I spent five and a half years sleeping on a bamboo mat in Hanoi...
George W. Bush used 9/11 the exact same way in 2004.
It increases suspicion that NBC did not include that part on the short clips. It isn't like they didn't already know that it would be viewed. Nora O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow were ripping into McCain's use of the POW thing again on MSNBC 2 hours before The Tonight Show aired on the east coast!
Someone, anyone, really everyone needs to call John McCain on the POW thing. Yes, we know you were a POW. We are sorry that you had to serve your country in that way. We all wish that you had never had to go through that.
Guess what, John? You have lived an extremely privileged and pampered existence for the last 25 plus years while married to Cindy. Don't ask us to feel sorry for you.
And NO! Being a POW does not qualify you for being President of the United States.
Wesley Clark said it well several months ago:
I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.
He got ripped for that line but it made it no less true.
It qualifies him for our sympathy. It qualifies him for a even larger amount of our respect for his service to our country than he would have gotten otherwise. It does not qualify him to be president.
He must stop using it as a crutch or suffer the consequences. And if he doesn't start to suffer the consequences, well, then, shame on us.
Update
Here is some video from Morning Joe on MSNBC:
Maybe he will get called on it.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern Sphere: Related Content
