I seldom find myself on the same side of an issue as the hawkish former POW John McCain. This week, however, he and another member of the U.S. Senate with the delightful name Flake teamed up to deliver a report about the Pentagon paying sports teams and other entertainment entities to put on patriotic shows (Alamo Comic Con? Really?).
The senators themselves might be faulted for spending tax dollars on advertising as the poster about their heroic tackling of paid patriotism looks like the cover of a pulp novel from McCain's youth. Their study of staged spectacles informed their choice to go with good creative, I'm guessing. And it probably cost considerably less than the $6.8 million paid to sports franchises.
Now that two senators have taken up the problem, which some of us already knew about but which the corporate media had been ignoring, this story is everywhere. That's another thing I could thank McCain for: I like to read widely, and this coverage led me into all sorts of interesting publications I would normally never see. Following the sidebar links in Deadspin.com, which my son described as "a cynical sports blog owned by Gawker media," led me to writer Tom Ley's fascinating deconstruction of some particularly smarmy staged patriotism:
Surprise Military Reunions At NFL Games Reach Peak Bullshit...As a series of visuals... it was a sterling example of the genre. The All-American cheerleader literally drops her pom-poms to run toward her husband, relief written across her face as she does; the happy young couple embraces; and Rampage, an anthropomorphic ram, looks on approvingly at their release from anxiety and fear.
But guess what Ley uncovered in his investigation of this patriotic visual? It was day #1 on the job for the cheerleader, who also works for the Marine Corps and was once a White House intern for Laura Bush. And her husband was returning from his post in South Korea, not combat. Plus they are both from super wealthy families (every heard of Anhueuser-Busch?) and this was probably one of the lesser extravaganzas of their life together. Ley included a tweet from the cheerleader thanking mom and a host of other people for her "surprise" which left me wondering if her mom had also engineered the couple's wedding -- at the Vatican. You cannot make shit like this up.
With 45% of U.S. children now in families in or perilously close to poverty, and while the mortality rate of even non-elderly white people in the U.S. soared compared to other developed nations, this is what their government spent their tax dollars on. Hey, they have to tax you and me -- like Exxon, the NFL pays no taxes.
Other empires have gone down this road before us. They had good creative, too.
We all know that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is an angry, angry man. McCain is famous for having been a POW during the Vietnam War, surviving years of torture in order to return home and seek elected office. It must have been a personal milestone, then, to be elevated to Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee following his party's triumphs in the mid-term elections. McCain's image had been tarnished by his choice of running mate in the presidential election where Obama beat him. The former governor of Alaska seemed so brazenly ignorant and yes, dumb, that it was hard to credit McCain's judgement in choosing her. Unless, of course, he was determined to lose the election and thus play his part in what Frank Zappa famously called, "the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex."
Henry Kissinger, on the other hand, the exalted geriatric warmonger (see the citizens' idictment against him here) who bears major responsibility from having put McCain in harm's way in Vietnam -- his very presence is apparently enough to make McCain's heart swell with pride.
Imagine getting to chair a hearing with Kissinger as the honored guest! Such are the dreams that might keep a young airman imprisoned in the "Hanoi Hilton" from going mad.
Then, along come women -- women! -- dressed in pink, no less, to spoil the greatest day of your life.
Women with the effrontery to speak out of turn, disrupting the start of your hearing in the hallowed chambers of power. McCain appeared to lose his temper when he said, "Get out of here, you low-life scum" to Codepink's Alli McCracken, among others. Or, maybe it was a Freudian slip, since it would be difficult to find a scummier creature on this planet than Kissinger.
Should a powerful Senator and former candidate for the highest office in the land really have to call out, "If we can't get the Capitol Police in here immediately..." Such a plea for backup could make the pleader appear weak in his own eyes, and in the eyes of his hero.
McCain's false claim that Codepink protesters wanted to physically harm Henry Kissinger is a coward's defense. Even if McCain has failed to pay attention since 2003 when Codepink began disrupting congressional hearings to call out warmongers, his staff knows better than that. Did McCain's staff not brief him on what would be entirely likely to occur in that hearing? Was there no one in charge of making sure the Capitol Police -- who know Codepink protesters very, very well by now -- were in the room and alert to intervene when the disruptions began? As far as controlling the message, McCain and his staff made a poor showing.*
HENRY... DOCTOR KISSINGER, I HOPE THAT... ON BEHALF OF ALL OF THE MEMBERS OF THIS COMMITTEE ON BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE, IN FACT, FROM ALL OF MY COLLEAGUES. I WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE FOR ALLOWING SUCH DISGRACEFUL BEHAVIOR TOWARDS A MAN WHO HAS SERVED THIS COUNTRY WITH THE GREATEST DISTINCTION AND I APOLOGIZE PROFUSELY.
People often ask what is the point of such disruptions. Henry Kissinger got fawned over, not led away in handcuffs. Madeleine Albright was not called to account for the deaths of thousands of children in Iraq under U.S. sanctions prior to Shock and Awe, deaths she said were a price worth paying.
The point is that the message HENRY KISSINGER WAR CRIMINAL was seen by millions around the globe, including lots of young people for whom Kissinger is a cipher. The Vietnam war and the bombing of Cambodia and Laos are history to millennials and all who follow. It's why the Pentagon has embarked on an enormous propaganda campaign to rewrite the history of the U.S.'s genocidal exercise in Southeast Asia. And also why the organization Veterans for Peace, founded by Vietnam vets now long of tooth and grey of hair, has mounted its own campaign to tell the truth about that war. Their website for the purpose, Vietnam: Full Disclosure, will be a resource for educators for years to come.
Unless information control in the 21st century becomes even more insidiously effective. In which case, we'll all be reduced to accepting McCain and Kissinger and Albright's versions of history. And that really would be a tragedy.
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