Joe Scarborough, talk show host and former GOP congressman, wrote a moving and powerful column about the southerners who booed Senator John McCain at a Trump rally.
Who are you? I’ve got to say that I really don’t know anymore. It’s kind of a strange turn of events since we went to the same public schools across the Deep South, then attended the same state colleges, cheering wildly on Saturdays for our favorite SEC teams, and spent Sunday mornings together in the same Southern Baptist pews. We even went to Training Union on Sunday nights.
Remember how our conversations always seemed to turn to politics? How we criticized Bill Clinton for playing so fast and loose with the truth? And how shamefully Democrats turned a blind eye to his fabrications and outright lies? Man, how could those Democrats sleep at night?
And what about how the guy we voted for, George W. Bush, running up the federal debt and launching ill-planned foreign adventures overseas? We swore that the next time Republicans got in power, we would pressure them to cut spending, attack the debt and put America’s foreign policy on a restrained and reasonable path. After Bush, we grew enraged by President Barack Obama’s efforts to reorder one-sixth of our economy on a straight party-line health-care vote. How reckless was that!
You and I always agreed that Washington Democrats and Republicans were cut from the same cloth, and that we needed to keep both sides honest. We were united by the shared belief that politicians must put country above party, right?
Right?
What happened to you?
The guys I came up with in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and northwest Florida for more than 40 years would never boo a former American prisoner of war — especially one who refused to return home until the enemy released every one of his buddies in the prison camp. Southern guys like us loved that “leave no man behind” ethos when John Wayne or Sylvester Stallone exhibited it on movie screens. So why would you even think of booing a man, now fighting for his life, who showed that true grit in real life?
But boo Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) you did, at the behest of President Trump during a rally in Alabama last week.
Mike Allen of Axios further reported this week that Trump has been “physically mocking” the thumbs-down gesture McCain used to deliver the deciding vote against the Republican health-care bill in July. Did that mocking involve an imitation of McCain’s stiff arm movements? In case you haven’t read a newspaper in the 45 years since we played on the same Dixie Youth Baseball team together, McCain got the hell beaten out of him by the communists who held him in the Hanoi Hilton for more than five years.
At that same time, Trump was dodging the draft by claiming that bone spurs stopped him from serving his country in uniform. And yet this crippling condition didn’t stop the spoiled Ivy League student from playing football, tennis and golf. After four draft deferments, Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 on the same day 40 U.S. servicemen were killed in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, McCain continued receiving the beatings that would forever leave him incapable of lifting his arms over his head. He kept enduring torture because he refused to leave his band of brothers behind.
Do you have that kind of character? If you booed McCain at last week’s rally, don’t bother answering. Someone has obviously failed you in your life; you probably need to spend some time figuring out who that was. And if you still go to church, you may also want to pray for all those around you who put tribal politics ahead of basic humanity.
Then maybe you should drive home and tell your children the story of John McCain’s sacrifice. If you can teach your children that lesson of heroism, there’s a chance they might grow up to have more character than the president you now praise.
And perhaps there just may be hope for our country.
Lack of education is what happened.
Religious indoctrination is what happened!
This is certainly worth posting. Thank you. The whimps who allow Trump to insult John McCain should be sent home in shame….but they clearly have none.
The ones who allow Trump to insult John McCain have the most $$$$$ to lo$e if the whole government/free market pyramid scheme gets divulged to the public.
OUCH .
Really Joe ,
Your friends changed from the time they stood there screaming taunts at students being escorted into schools in the 50s and 60s . Cheered when they watched Lewis on the Birmingham bridge get his head bashed in .
Discovered religion in the sixties as a way to avoid integrated Public Schools . Voted for people and policy that would decimate the poor even if it hurt themselves. Because the poor were always seen as darker.
Sorry I ain’t buying it , Ronald Reagan was the first Demagogue and Chief and he was given a good head start by Nixon and his Southern Strategy. And before him Goldwater a vocal opponent of the Civil and voting rights acts. .
Glad you’ve seen the light Joe ,since the dirtbag and chief launched a personal attack against you and Mika . But the sticks and stones of politics is in policy not in language.
Are you now atoning for a lifetime of advocating policy that benefited the wealthy and crushed the poor. For being a Tea Party Republican before there was a Tea party.
Perhaps you have changed a bit . Apparently a studio in NY has taken the Alabama out of
you . Your friends as you call them haven’t changed for the worse . They just haven’t changed.
Well stated! Many delusional people have helped Trump rise to power, and those “southern values” have always tried to suppress black and brown people.
the 60’s – 70’s Dixiecrats = todays Tea Party. Bad then and worse now!
Nixon made the conversion easy for them .
Can you name the three southern senators who did not go along with the Dixiecrats in 1948? It was Gore and Kefaufer of TN and Ole LBJ. The movement of the south toward Dixiecratism has been fueled by a demographic of northerners moving to the sunbelt, mostly full of woeful tales about high taxes and lazy ethnic minorities. We would not elect an Albert Gore Sr. In Tennessee now to save our souls. Everybody that moves here is a retired conservative wanting to have low taxes and superb services. I guess they find a home.
Roy,
Don’t blame us for Roy Moore!
All true and all too true, BUT…..until common sense, common decency SMACKDOWNS from those on the right, like this one from Scarborough start showing up on right wing media on a regular basis, nothing will change in the Dumpster sheeples savior desiring, personality cult loving pea sized brains.
I agree. Scarborough, and his version of the GOP are not on the moral high ground. I think the republicans have done so much to cause actual suffering in the U.S.
However, McCain is the real thing. Even when he ran against Obama, I saw him struggling to do it with integrity- Unfortunately he was/is in the wrong political party. To see them mocking him reminds of how appropriate the designation “deplorables,” was and still is.
I support the chastisement of his compatriot republicans. I only wish more of his church going, Clinton and Obama hating, brethren would find the dignity to join him.
McCain made only one serious mistake. He picked that idiot Palin as his running mate.
Agreed.
I watch him every morning. I do not like him when he talks about education. But he is a ferocious critic of Trump, and Mika is even moreso. I have to ask……are you sure of what you are talking about on this….Something seems off.
sorry…I am the one who was off….you were posting what Joe was saying to other southerners…and I carelessly thought it was you taking to him.
He was not always a critic of Trump . He normalized him during the Election.Kept predicting he would become “Presidential” And I watch him and seldom agree with him on anything .
https://www.salon.com/2017/06/30/joe-scarborough-and-mika-brzezinski-are-angry-at-donald-trump-now-but-theyve-never-apologized-for-promoting-him/
Joe’s epiphany is too little, too late.
Who let Trump call in to his show, every morning, to normalize him? Joe and Mika.
Did Joe call Trump out on his McCain POW comments on his show? I don’t know, I stopped watching the Trump lovefest that was Morning Joe leading up to the election.
The circus tent can’t hold anymore clowns!
Good grief! The drama is staggering.
And…What’s underneath the covers?
Wow!