{"id":7408,"date":"2006-05-15T09:40:48","date_gmt":"2006-05-15T13:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7408"},"modified":"2006-05-15T09:40:48","modified_gmt":"2006-05-15T13:40:48","slug":"in-2000-falwell-was-the-problem-now-its-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/in-2000-falwell-was-the-problem-now-its-us\/","title":{"rendered":"In 2000, Falwell was the problem; now it’s us"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you missed it, [tag]John McCain[\/tag] appeared alongside Jerry “agent of intolerance” Falwell over the weekend, delivering the commencement address at the televangelist’s Virginia college. Would the bold, straight-talking senator stay true to his alleged principles and “sister souljah” the man who said America “deserved” the attacks of 9\/11? Not so much<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With the Rev. [tag]Jerry Falwell[\/tag] at his side, Senator John [tag]McCain[\/tag] offered a spirited defense of the Iraq war on Saturday, telling graduating students at [tag]Liberty University[\/tag] that victory there was crucial to world security. But Mr. McCain urged opponents of the war to vigorously “state their opposition” in the interest of critical debate on this increasingly unpopular conflict. […]<\/p>\n

Though the two men shared a stage here on Saturday, greeting each other warmly and drawing applause from the festive audience, Mr. McCain made only a brief mention of Mr. Falwell in his 28-minute speech. And Mr. McCain, who is normally eager to talk to reporters, left immediately after finishing his speech and before Mr. Falwell offered his greeting to graduates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is not to say McCain was entirely positive and constructive. Six years ago in Virginia, the senator said the religious right had a “corrupting influence” on politics in America. This year, McCain is lashing out at a new target: us<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed, and wiser than anyone else I knew. It seemed I understood the world and the purpose of life so much more profoundly than most people. I believed that to be especially true with many of my elders, people whose only accomplishment, as far as I could tell, was that they had been born before me, and, consequently, had suffered some number of years deprived of my insights… It’s a pity that there wasn’t a [tag]blogosphere[\/tag] then. I would have felt very much at home in the medium.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have no idea which blogs McCain has been reading to give him this impression — my hunch is he hasn’t read any — but it’s encouraging to hear that McCain is no longer “infatuated with self-expression.”<\/p>\n

A younger McCain wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of writing a blog and instead would have gone straight to podcasting — the man clearly loves the sound of his own voice too much to bother with the printed word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you missed it, [tag]John McCain[\/tag] appeared alongside Jerry “agent of intolerance” Falwell over the weekend, delivering the commencement address at the televangelist’s Virginia college. Would the bold, straight-talking senator stay true to his alleged principles and “sister souljah” the man who said America “deserved” the attacks of 9\/11? Not so much. With the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}