Check out John McCain trying to wiggle his way out of the fact that he voted against MLK day back in 1983. John McCain was born in 1936. He was how old, how old—hmmmm—let’s see…maybe 47 years old I think. He was almost 50 years old and he voted against MLK day! You see he needed just a few more years to figure out the impact MLK had on our society. He certainly can’t say in this statement that he was young and inexperienced. Nope, he has to give the impression that he was young and inexperienced since it was his first year in Congress—so he studied and learned and studied and learned until it dawned on him. And then he suddenly realized he made a big mistake.
McCain: I voted in my first, I think it was my first year in congress against then… I began to learn and I studied and people talked to me and I not supported it but I fought very hard in my home state of Arizona for recognition against a Governor who was against my own party.
And what else did he say?
“I had not been involved in the issue. I had come from being in the military to running for Congress in a state that did not have a very large African American population and it had not been in issue. It just simply had not been.”
In a February 2000 interview with ABC News, McCain said his initial opposition to a holiday was based on his belief that “it was not necessary to have another federal holiday, that it cost too much money, that other presidents were not recognized.”
He didn’t follow teh Blacks all that much because they didn’t really exist in Arizona.
The not usually very good Jack Tapper makes the same points on McCain and MLK day.
Tomorrow Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by speaking in Memphis on the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination.
He will no doubt sound a bit different than he did in April 1987, when McCain was interviewed by USA Today about his five and a half years as a P.O.W. “They never gave us any meaningful news,” McCain said. “They told us the day that Martin Luther King was shot, they told us the day that Bobby Kennedy was shot, but they never bothered to tell us about the moon shot. So it was certainly selected news.”
Surely the John McCain of 2008 would not hold that the assassinations of King and Kennedy were not “meaningful.” (UDATE: McCain’s top aide Mark Salter says McCain didn’t mean “meaningful” in that interview, arguing that what McCain was trying to say was that the Vietnamese always gave the prisoners bad news from home, not good news.)
In fact earlier this year, McCain told a different version of the story of how he heard of King’s assassination…read on
No Trackbacks To “McCain voted against MLK Day at almost 50 years of age!“
scum
The fact is, among people who would support a McCain candidacy, voting against MLK day is not a negative.
I just heard him speaking in Memphis. He admitted that what he had done and many in the audience yelled to him, We forgive you.
MSNBC is going on and on about Obama not being in Memphis today like Hillary and McCain. The reason he isn’t there is that he is where Bobby Kennedy spoke the night of the day that Martin Luther King was killed.
“I had not been involved in the issue. I had come from being in the military to running for Congress in a state that did not have a very large African American population and it had not been in issue. It just simply had not been.”
this doesn’t pass the sniff test.
come on mccain, you have some pretty high priced political whores telling you what to say, and this is the best they could scrounge together?
Yeah, intelligent people get this. I mean, I have never been a US senator, but I get and support MLK Day. But what will the MSM have to say? Hmmm….
“Senator McCain? Your free pass, sir. Testicle polish while you wait, sir? Very good, sir.”
GOP The party of HATE!
Sounded like he was heckled today for it.
Wait, wait, wait… I thought McCain said he voted against MLK Day because he was opposed, in principle, to another federal holiday. (You know how hard senators like to work!) When was this flip-flop?
it is friggin infuriating that, in the msm, rightwing circles, and the clinton cabal, the words spoken by pastor wright (who, btw, is NOT running for prez) are covered more than the actual words of mccain (who, btw, IS running for president).
racist buffoon
mccain is one of the most shameful members of congress, which includes that dirtbag murtha…
they’re only up there stuffing their pockets with public money…..
lecherous, traitorous, there aren’t enough words to describe their corrupt behavior….
mccain has the temper of a 5 year old kid, taboot.
who needs that?
Samson- @ 4:
The best campaign supporters that Lobbyist can buy.
“In fact earlier this year, McCain told a different version of the story of how he heard of King’s assassination…”
He might have confused it with the story of how he heard of McKinley’s assassination.
Terry740 @ 6:
Well, the hits just keep rolling in on old John. He doesn’t like:
Middle Easterners
Asians
Russians
French
Blacks
and thats just off the top of my head…
The one argument against MLK day that ever made sense to me was that there shouldn’t be a day celebrating a single man when there were many people who did great things for our civil rights. So instead there should be a “civil rights day” much like how the president’s birthdays were all consolidated into a “President’s Day”.
Sadly I don’t think many GOP think about MLK day in those terms.
He won’t release his medical records and refuses the Secret Service protection.
This guy might be dying and this is his farewell tour.
Sid @ 2:
I guess it’s like McCain said … Where I came from, we just didn’t have a large African American population, and it had not been an issue. It just simply had not been. He seems to have had his blinders on for everything except war. Must have been tough for him when he realized there were people in America that weren’t white.
The reporters on his plane are stupid - they should have immediately follwed up with - “In 1987 Did you not know who MLK was? Most school kids knew.”
So should we be concerned about a Presidential candidate whose only interested in some issues? What else does he need to learn?
People, please, please, please remember to vote for a Democrat - any Democrat - in November.
This Repuke guy, mccain, is simply too old, too ill, and too much of a doddering old fool to be the president for very long should he be elected, and he will be replaced by the VP. It is the VP choice that mccain makes that is potentially scary, and that will tell the country just what the true agenda of the Repuke party is. Just hope the choice is not jebbie bush or huckabee.
BTW, a supposedly competent adult, who mccain should have been at age 47, who voted against honoring MLK is a racist, plain and simple. Don’t let his verbal obfuscation convince you otherwise.
Sid @ 2:
bingo..
also, one could make the argument that he was simply voting in line with his constituency….
The schmuck is a card-carrying agent of intolerance, for fook sake.
The more he talks, the more it looks like he got into Annapolis because his Daddy and Granddaddy were Admirals.
We’re still stuck in this movie and they want to force us to sit through the sequel!!!
He’s an incompetent fraud. End of fookin’ story. This is no Country for clueless old men.
I had come from being in the military to [dumping the woman who raised my kids so that I could marry a rich young beer heiress who could fund my] running for Congress…
FTFY Grandpa
Speaking of McCain and other idiot Republicans, when do we get to see how much money McCain raised in March? I heard a clown on the cable news yesterday say it might be a problem for Obama ih he were to “raise too much money.” Even if we forget about the money–Obama brought 218,000 new donors and probably non-GOP voters to the game. And you thought it was tough being a Republican in 2006.
I find fascinating his remark about what he was and wasn’t told by his captors.
Things in America (anti-war sentiment among the people uppermost) began to radically shift in 1967. Indeed, when “the country went to hell in a hand basket during the ’60’s” crowd invokes that tired refrain, it’s generally the late ’60’s they’re talking about. Remember Bush saying he liked the Beatles until they went “all weird”?
McCain missed it all.
So, his excuse is that he had little awareness of the details of the civil rights movement? He’s saying he didn’t pay attention to it because it didn’t involve him directly. And he didn’t bother looking into it before the 1983 vote, because … he was lazy, I guess.
What a self-centered, ignorant jerk.
In a February 2000 interview with ABC News, McCain said his initial opposition to a holiday was based on his belief that “it was not necessary to have another federal holiday, that it cost too much money, that other presidents were not recognized.”
I didn’t realize MLK had been President.
MCCAIN: “When they told me that Bobby Kennedy had been killed I teared up a bit. When they told me that Martin Luther was assassinated I thought they were torturing me. I knew he died of a stroke and that they were trying to make me think that it was February 18, 1546 when I knew it was somewhere around February 18 of 1968… and when I found out we had the Moon shot I thought to myself, ‘Why the hell would we shoot the damned moon?’ Needless to say, my friends, those little bastards knew how to torture!”
frank bonas jr @ 17:
I am sixty years old ,I remember the “white only” water fountains, the “colored” entrances to stores to keep them separate from the white customers, separate but not equal schools, working for wages that could only be lower if they were still slaves. I remember crying as a small child in Winn Dixie as a tall, razor thin old black man signed his payroll check with an x because he couldn’t read or write. I cried because this man would never know the joy of reading that started for me in the third grade and has enriched my life to this day.McBush never saw them for the very reason I seldom saw them , because the “colored” weren’t allowed to be near the “white folks” unless they were doing some type of work.
McCain associates with racists, has racists on his staff, seeks the endorsement of racists and says racist comments. He only claimed to support MLK Day when he found he could benefit politically from it. A racist and an opportunist. I’d love to see it when he lets slip some racist “cottonp…” comment during a debate with Obama.
Is this a new one? McFishOutaWater
You know, ’cause he flippin’ and floppin’ all over the place.
pissed off patricia @ 3:
I heard part of McCrazy’s speech, and it was all about him, and I thought this was MLK’s day. Another reason Obama might haved stayed away is, It is about MLK, not Obama.
McCain voted against the MLK holiday and against gay rights. I guess there were no gay people in Arizona either, not even in a big city like Phoenix. Is McCain a bigot and a homophobe or simply pandering to the bigoted, homphobic base of his electorate. Either way you cut it the GOP is the party of intolerance and hate.
AZ is a beautiful state, but boy is it weird. They also don’t observe daylight savings time. I’m sure his racist attitude is a “plus” for him with most repubs.
He’s an idiot… Just not surprised he would take that position on MLK at 47….37 or 87…. He’s an old skirt chasin, trophy wife totin cut-out caracature of a pathetic Reagan type politician. He was a second rate pilot with a poor record at Annapolis who spent a lot of time burnishing a sketchy reputation and somehow turning a small amount of actual flight time and combat missions and loss of jets shot out from under him or just wrecked thru poor piloting, somehow turning this sad resume into a chestful of medals and some kind of phony reputation for individualism that he has either abandoned or never existed in the first place. A vote for this lyin jackass is a vote for pie in the sky. It’s a vote for a phony feel good grandpa figure that just has no connection or relationship to reality….Whatever John McCain is at 72, he ain’t no leader, he ain’t fit to be president of this nation…. JD
Yet , you and at least half of the “pro life” crowd decide to try and ban abortion when you’re not women ; how does that work , you wrinkled old skid mark ?
lipstickhottie,
They also don’t observe daylight savings time.
You’d think a racist would crave more daylight…
I suppose it’s the sudden change back to it getting dark earlier that really bugs `em.
emphasa @ 15:
A lot of everyday people worked REALLY hard for our civil rights, but how many of them were the public face of the struggle? How many of them had J. Edgar “I’m a closet homosexual” Hoover audio taping them and sending said tape to their spouse, with the message that they ought to go commit suicide?
Did anyone notice the Black man in dayglo vest holding the umbrella to protect Senator McCain from the Rain at the Memphis MLK museum speech this morning?
That he had a “servant” to hold his umbrella seems strange given that his hands were free during his speech. That the “servant” doing this was a black man who seemed uninterested at best was even stranger. It seems the Senator had a not getting wet dream.
Damn, Clinton should gave the speech of a lifetime but MSNBC cut her off.
CNN ran it.
Go figure.
One of the reasons Republicans have been re-electing mcCain to Congress for so long is BECAUSE he voted against MLK.
If he admits now that it was a mistake, he will hemorrhage even more GOP votes.
Ex-Canuck @ 19:
Second that!!!
Chico Hussein @ 40:
Dobsons head will blow off…Hahahahahahahahahaha
Isome Hussein @ 37
Well, off the top of my head: Malcom X, Cesar Chavez… Of course if you’re referring to “the struggle” of African-Americans, then I guess only Malcom X and MLK would apply. However I’m sure the civil rights of latinos should count too, right?
Terry740 @ 28:
You’re right. The separation existed. White and Black neighborhoods only. I remember my mom calling me and yelling, what is that “n word” doing on our porch. When I responded that he was a friend of mine from school, she just yelled, get him away from here and never invite him here again. What will the neighbors think. It took me time to figure out her prejudice and is something I’ll never forget. We’ve come a long way since then, but it’s sad to see that the same prejudices still exist.
Does John McCain have cancer? Will his vice president end up running the United States? Are we really voting for McCain’s vice during this next election? McCain has a lot of questions to answer. Will McCain commit fraud and submit false health records?
Will voters see the danger in not knowing the true state of McCain’s health?
The 25 to 30 percent who support Shrub and will vote for McCain will find this story motivation for them to hit the polls in November.
Get a grip, you guys are desperate. Isn’t this site always complaining about how the MSM is not talking about the real issues?