Thread by @PatBlanchfield

John McCain called Code Pink protestors "low-life scum" while threatening them with arrest for interrupting Henry Kissinger. When Cindy teased him about his hair in front of reporters on a campaign, he told her ""At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."

As late as the 2000s he'd double down on publicly calling the Vietnamese who held him captive "gooks" (which didn't stop him from brokering a deal to sell Vietnam arms). He opposed making MLK Day a holiday, only backing away under pressure years later. He chose a Birther as VP.

He called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a "monkey," and doubled down by saying it was a joke, something people were being too "sensitive" about. In another "joke," McCain, a bomber pilot who had seen first hand what US munitions do to human bodies, sang a song about carpet bombing Iran.

But anyway it's very on brand for Joe Biden especially to embrace an ethos of generalized forgetting and hero-worship when it comes to older white politicos with track records of being ghoulish and whose primary pleasures are war, selling arms, and jailing people.

BC this thread is getting around, appending this, me in @thebafflermag. It's about a lot of things beyond just his bio: David Foster Wallace, war as part of US civic religion, the idea of sacrifice, more. I'm proud but saddened by how well it's held up. thebaffler.com/latest/the-mcc…