I’ve been getting angrier and angrier over the media’s coverage of John McCain’s death, but not because of anything said about McCain.
“Who do we have to look to now?”the pundits keep asking. Where have they gone?
“Who do we have to look to now?”the pundits keep asking. Where have they gone?
They site his “unique” accomplishments. He saw the threat of Putin when others did not. He never held a grudge. He worked across the isle. He rose from defeat after defeat to continue to serve. He was both an optimist and a pragmatist.
He gets compared to Bobby Kennedy, and John Meachem lists a dozen distinguished white male senators who, like McCain, worked behind the scenes to get things done, often with their political enemies, and wonders where such senators are now.
The pundits look around, shaking their heads at the absence of such character, such a record of service today.
Is it because our image of great leadership is still indelibly male? Or is it simply impossible for the media to dislodge from their brains the faux Hillary Clinton that they helped create? Of course, it’s both.
They rightly contrast McCain and Trump. But do any say a word about the fact that as Trump rose--illegally--one of the greatest servants of our country was being trashed every day? That we could in fact have had the leader that they now bemoan is absent from the scene?
She is still here, John Meachem. And greater in integrity, persistence, accomplishment than any of the white male senators you compare to McCain and laud as serving “the better angels” of our nature, the “soul of America,” the great white male past that you mourn the loss of.
As I write this, I hear McCain referred to as “the most important figure of the last fifty years who was not president.”
Is that how the history books will tell it?
We’ll see.
Is that how the history books will tell it?
We’ll see.
@threadreaderapp Please unroll.
