I want to know: Who is the real John McCain?
This past Sunday, when Colin Powell appeared on Meet the Press to endorse Barack Obama, he also made sure to give his friend John McCain the benefit of the doubt in the wake of an increasingly race-baited campaign by bitter surrogates and running mates. But even as he described his frustration with the ugly rancor of some of his fellow Republicans, Powell affirmed that, "John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know."
Well, Mr. Powell, does McCain saying "I hate the gooks" change your mind at all? The sunken story around the Republican presidential nominee's statement eight years ago -- to which I can't seem to find a public apology for -- seems to lie pretty buried in the media, including on the Huffington Post. There are several mentions of it on this site (click here, here, and here), but nothing seems to have gotten much traction (Those HuffPo articles have only about 35 comments between them) and most articles point only to the original San Francisco Chronicle story back in February 2000.
To say the silence around this racist statement is dumbfounding is an understatement. I just recently stumbled upon this graphic on the website Angry Asian Man and immediately posted something about the quote. And there is a new book that builds the case against McCain for a history of racial insensitivity. It also hasn't gone completely unnoticed by the right. Rush Limbaugh noted an alleged video of McCain uttering the phrase. But mostly, the story just seems to be at a low simmer. (Is Obama planning an October surprise with that video?)
Perhaps the subtle inclination is to give McCain a pass since it's not atypical for some scarred Vietnam vets to harbor the term for their wartime enemy -- and nobody really wants to call these guys racists. It's just like their father's use of "Jap" to describe World War II Japanese soldiers and citizens, terminology pretty much accepted as the spoils of war. I mean, dude's a pre-boomer, and those guys just sometimes say things like that, right? Anyway. And while the term shouldn't ever be acceptable, it should absolutely disqualify a presidential candidate. (Where the hell is Asian American conservative and self-hating firebrand Michelle Malkin, who finally has an opportunity to do the right thing?)
I don't want to think that the tolerance for racism against Vietnamese and other Asians is higher, but it seems to be. I would be just another blogger in the bunch, barking loudly, if McCain had uttered the word nigger or kike. But gook, and I've got to dig to find any major media discussion already in progress. And before anybody jumps to call this gotcha journalism, save it. This isn't a drunken, private rant by some radio shock jock, it's from a man running as the leader of the Republican Party, and the chief global policy job. McCain wants to be the Bridge Builder-in-Chief. This man would decide how we interact with a dozen Asian nations -- several of which we've fought wars against -- not to mention a growing Asian American population. You don't need me to explain how anybody capable of reducing a group of humans to a hateful, insulting caricature isn't fit to govern in the 21st Century. Do you?
But something is holding this story back. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is quick to be distracted by "God damn America" and "typical white person." Is it, like my friend Diana says, in a resigned, obviously facetious tone, "Maybe we all kinda hate the gooks." Man, is that it? Maybe we haven't collectively forgiven the Vietnamese for driving us out of their country after nearly 60,000 American deaths. Maybe we've all grown up watching too many Vietnam War movies where the white G.I. is just a nice Midwestern kid trying to do good, and the screaming pajama-wearing Asian guerrilla is the murderous devil incarnate. God, I hope she's wrong.
I have been on a number of blogs that discuss Asian American grievances, and they often reference the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, killed in a hate crime by two Detroit autoworkers (a 25-year-old story that's probably news to most of you). Chin's story, rarely part of any discussion of hate crimes, is finally surfacing in a film. The arguments on these blogs usually contend that racist crimes, bigotry and insensitivity against Americans of Asian descent are still more allowable in society. Compared to epithets and offensive remarks and stereotyping against blacks, Hispanics and Jews, cultural affronts on Asians and Asian Americans rarely get too high on the food chain. The missed McCain Gook story would seem to bear that out. How else can you explain it?
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I hadn't heard of this until recently and was shocked that this hasn't made bigger news.(especially with "liberal MSM") His equivocation that he doesn't mean all Vietnamese is similar to those that use the N word but say "I only mean certain blacks."
No candidate that had gone on record with a similar statement using the N word would even be taken seriously. Even though it was said a mere 8 years before a few people have said it was a "while ago".
My question would be this:What is the statute of limitations on hate?????
I'm an avid Obama supporter, and I'm glad he/media didn't harp on this with McCain. A lot of people say 'HE'S GOT ISSUES.' Yeah, no kidding. He trained, fought, and was tortured by (North) Vietnamese. What if he is a little racist? I can forgive that. Does it disqualify him as president? Probably, but not as a decent person. Do we blame old black men from the 30s, 40s, or 50s when they voice their frustration, and yes, even hatred for the White America? No, not really. We don't condone it, but we understand it.
Now if Palin says anything even close to this, all bets are off. =)
Sure, anybody with a brain and any social awarenes to speak of knows better than to get incensed at the oldsters' ingrained racism, however it rankles. But, instead, we have a society that both jumps on their atavistic viewpoints and senses of oppression and also permits the current, flagrant usage of ethnic background-, skin color-, nation of origin-, and religion-based slurs.
If our nation were as great as the GOP claims it is, they would be locked away for their criminally usurious nepotism, fear-mongering, and disenfranchisement.
If anything should disqualify somebody for president, then playing up some of our peoples' fears and prejudices in order to gain rabid followings blind to the merits of the "other" should do it. And McCain incites these fears to the point where they're so tangible his followers are asking for the death of a patriotic opponent, attacking people because of their name, skin color, or religion, ironically calling everyone who disagrees with their decidedly unAmerican beliefs "unAmerican".
This makes McCain's slips of the tongue, his evidence of bigotry, more than fair topics when it is part of a pattern of oppression, no matter how he dresses up this hatred and supremacy.
It's also why I give British veterans who fought in places such as Burma and India against the Japanese when they start spouting racist terminology toward Japanese a pass, too. British POWs were treated extremely cruelly and their reaction is understandable even as offensive as I find those slurs to be.
I'm glad to hear someone who isn't ignoring history.
Just another instance of him being out of touch haha
Obama's campaign may not have been perfect. But overall it has put him on the verge of capturing the presidency with a three hundred plus electoral college majority. No need to do anything different now.