McCain is Just Another Politician

Two weeks after his apparently totally disingenuous offer of $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Yuma, it is clear that John McCain is not a man of his word. In fact, McCain is not the political voice in the wilderness he wants you to think he is, rather he is just another politician.

After seeing McCain's $50 an hour offer, I immediately sent his office multiple e-mail messages indicating my interest and willingness to take the work. I also sent an e-mail to Andrea Jones, Senator McCain's press secretary, detailing my opinion of McCain's insensitive and arrogant statements and asking for a response from the Senator. To date, I have not received a response to any of my e-mail messages.

In addition to the e-mail messages, I also placed two calls (April 6, April 10) to the Senator's Washington, D.C. office. Both times I spoke with low-level McCain staffers who declined to identify themselves. When I indicated that I was calling about the $50 an hour jobs, both staffers said exactly the same thing, "Sir, the Senator was being facetious."

You can believe I called that bluff right then and there. "Are you kidding me," I asked. "No, really, are you really going to try to feed me that answer?"

Silence.

"I watched the speech, and I saw him not once, but twice challenge the audience that they could not pick lettuce in Yuma for the season for $50 an hour. He was damn serious, and I so am I. I'm ready to go to Yuma tomorrow, and I want that $50 an hour job" I continued.

More silence. Finally, "Sir, the Senator was being facetious, he made that quite clear."

Wha-?, huh-?, wh-?. He what?" I sputtered. "I saw the speech. I heard the words. He was not being facetious. Did you see the speech?" I questioned.

Guess what their answers were? That would be a no, on both counts; neither staffer had seen the speech they were defending.
Though I pressed for more explanation, the McCain staffers would not utter a word beyond their practiced company line.

After two days, the Main Stream Media (MSM) hadn't even batted an eye on the McCain comment. Lying is an accepted and even appreciated element of both politics and entertainment, so both McCain and the MSM thought nothing of it and were moving right along to their next misleading and fallacious statements, stories, and quotes. But a tiny band of upstart Internet rabble spanning the political spectrum, including the TruthMaker, Project USA, and Free Republic dared speak out.

Determined that McCain not get away with his total bald-faced, flat-out, fuck-you lie without any repercussions of any kind, I resolved to become a misshapen, rusty wheel, wobbling around with the persistent annoying squeak of the righteous, irritating the fuck out of anybody within earshot (I'm thinking some kind of Souza march as the background music for the book-on-tape version of this part of blog post). Because politicians are so completely insulated from their electoral constituents and only listen to their paying constituents, the MSM is really the only way to hold them accountable, which goes a long way toward explaining why we're in the mess we're in. But that's for another day.

I sent multiple e-mail messages to the likes of Lou Dobbs, Dan Froomkin, Howard Kurtz, and Sal Ruibal, imploring them to call McCain on the carpet for his duplicity. As I told Lou Dobbs, this is my protest, this is my voice. I want McCain and all politicians held accountable for their words and actions and I'm willing to go pick lettuce in Yuma for a few months to do it.

For a while, it seemed like this story was just going to disappear into the ether. For example, in the week following McCain's Lettuce Challenge, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz wrote two articles on McCain and his public image, but neither made any mention of the Lettuce Challenge. Meanwhile the Page 6 payola fluff is still getting daily treatment.

The Lettuce Challenge story finally started to get some traction on April 13 when Lou Dobbs ran a short piece on his show about Project USA's online lettuce-picker application. On Friday, more than three dozen demonstrators showed up at McCain's Washington office carrying job applications and heads of lettuce. By yesterday, even the conservatives were piling on. Viva la revolucion!

Still, no one has actually held McCain accountable. He has not been interviewed or questioned by any journalist of any kind about the Lettuce Challenge. So long as the MSM allows politicians to walk away from the public statements with total impunity, politicians will never feel the need to keep their word. Just ask McCain about that.

As a conspiratorial side note related to McCain's renewed allegiance to the Republican power brokers, just try to find a transcript somewhere of McCain's speech to the AFL-CIO on April 4 in Washington, D.C. "You can't do it, my friends."

McCain's capitulation to the dark side has been building to a head in recent months, including throwing himself into the sweaty embrace of Jerry Falwell (much as he dry humped Bush in the '04 campaign) and speaking at Falwell's Liberty U. next month. South Carolina in 2000 seems a distant memory, like it never happened. And oh! look-ee here, on Sunday Falwell comes out and says he won't endorse Rudy Giuliani. Hmm, I wonder who he will endorse. I won-der . . .

To top it all off, Mr. Straight Talk Express is seriously going off the rails by signing on to the Nixonian Republican "win at any cost" philosophy. He truly is a maverick no more, if in fact he ever was -- let's not forget that McCain's maverick image is more image than maverick. Anybody remember a little something called the Keating Five Scandal?

Let Me First Say . . .

You want to know what bullshit sounds like? I'll give you a hint: you can hear it from just about every single political, legal, or economic guest, "expert", or commentator on any televised news show.

It goes something like this: the show's host asks a question that the guest doesn't want to answer. The guest, rather than answer the question, instead says, "Thank you for having me on today. (Optional) Before I get your question (which the guest has no intention of doing), let me first say--"

That's it, "Let me first say . . ." This is television code for "You know and I know that there is no way I'm going to go anywhere near that question, so I'm going to give a wink and a nod and talk about something completely different in the hopes of either steering the discussion back to my talking points or eating up enough of your air time that you won't have time to ask the question again. As the host, you will meekly try to get back to the original question, or not, depending on your network, before giving up and going on the next issue."

This tactic, which apparently is part of the mutually understood covenant of the media business, has had the infuriating result of making every TV interview completely worthless because no question ever gets answered. Of course, both the guests and the interviewers are fine with that because TV interviews are not about answering questions anyway, they are about marketing and entertainment.

So the next time you watch a TV interview, get out your notepad and tally up how many times you hear, "Let me first say. . ." Or better yet, demand to know the truth. As long as we continue to accept shameless dissembling in place of integrity and credibility, we will never actually know about or understand the issues that affect our daily lives.

TruthMaker to McCain: "I accept your offer, sir!"

That's right. Maverick has made his bluff and the TruthMaker is calling him on it.

Tuesday in a speech to the AFL-CIO's annual convention in Washington, D.C., Senator John McCain, who is currently in the process of selling his once "maverick" soul to the Bid'ness and Jesus wings of the Republican Party in hopes of getting the nomination for POTUS in '08, was actually booed when he tried to go through the GOP (biz and Jes', not the actual conservative Republican) talking points on immigration. Though McCain threatened to leave and even feigned walking away from the lectern, he did continue his speech to further booing.

The talking point that drew my attention was #17, illegal immigrants are simply taking jobs that regular Americans don't want or won't take.

Irritated by the response he was getting, the senior senator from Arizona made an offer to the crowd that was at best an offer made in bad judgment, and at worst completely cynical and disingenuous political grandstanding in the typically Republican style.

In response to one cry from the crowd to "Pay a decent wage," McCain shot back that he would pay anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Yuma. McCain then went on to disparage the American worker by noting twice that anybody interested had to work the entire lettuce season, not just one day. "You can't do it, my friends" McCain added.

After watching McCain's challenge, I immediately fired off an email to the Senator's office. I indicated that as a college-educated person doing white collar work in the Bay Area for much less than $50 an hour, I am willing to leave my home and family, and travel hundreds of miles to the south to earn that kind of money.

I further challenged him to put his money where his mouth was, since I have accepted his challenge, and am willing to put my lower back where my mouth is. I did stipulate that McCain's offer had to be legitimate and verified in writing. I don't want him pulling any crap like giving me a contact number and I've got to take it from there.

So the ball is in McCain's court now. I need the money, and as I told the Senator, I'm willing to do pretty much any job for $50 an hour in this economy. Let's see if he has the cajones to keep his word.

A word on his word. For one, it's typical of Republicans to try to skew the debate. Like Republicans that constantly try to compare the War in Iraq to World War II, McCain tried to bolster his argument that Americans won't do field labor with the completely egregious example of $50 an hour wages. What a joke. If it is true that Americans won't do field labor, it's because the massive corporate agribusinesses offer demeaning and degrading wages that the average American can't live on. Do you know how long the line would be to scrub toilets or bus tables if employers were paying $50? Even $15 an hour would make a huge difference. But no, McCain hyperbolically throws out the number $50 an hour. It's insulting and totally misleading, and he knows it.

And will he stick to his word? I have a feeling that many other Americans like me are going to flood his office with requests for one of these $50 an hour jobs. Will he honor his offer or will he cop out with some chicken-shit backpedaling about how the offer was only for the people in the audience or that he was just making an example?

He better not, because he stood up there at the lectern and made his offer not once, but twice. He was adamant, mostly about the fact that nobody in the audience could actually work an entire lettuce season, but also about his offer. Well, like I said, I've already contacted him to say I accept the offer. Sign me up right now.

On the other hand, if McCain welches on his offer, then he should be soundly denounced as just another bag of political gas, a lying member of the ruling class that will say and do anything to get elected, or in this case, nominated. Put up or shut up Senator.

Finally, who exactly is going to pay this $50 an hour wage, if it ever materializes? Certainly no agribusiness employer is going to cough up that kind of money. They can pay 10 illegal immigrants for them kind of wages. So is the money going to come out of the taxpayers' pockets? Is McCain making idle boasts on the taxpayers' dime? Will it come out of his personal funds?

Questions like where the money will come from, a question for which there is no clear or logical answer, seem to indicate that McCain is in fact full of hot air. He never had any intention of paying anybody $50 an hour to pick lettuce. He was just trying to make his political point by manipulating the issue and distracting people from the real facts. SOP for the Republican party.

I'll be sitting by the phone waiting for my $50 an hour job and waiting to see if John McCain is a man of his word or just another politician that can't be trusted to live up to his promises.