McCain Exploits the Steelers. Now the Man Has Gone Too Far

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


steelers-tattoos.jpg One thing politicians should never, ever do is disrespect storied professional sports franchises. Too many people are too invested in teams like the Cubs, the Red Sox, the Red Wings, the Packers, etc. — using them for phony political purposes deeply offends people. See an example of a true sports fan at right.

Maybe I’m just projecting. Today, I’m offended. John McCain is using the Pittsburgh Steelers, the greatest professional sports franchise in American history, for his personal gain. Also, he’s exploiting his record as a POW, but I’m offended less by that.

Here’s the deal. John McCain tells a story from time to time (it’s in his 1999 memoir “Faith of My Fathers,” for example) about how under pressure as a POW in Vietnam to give up vital information, McCain pretended to hand over the names of his squadron mates by reciting the starting lineup of the Green Bay Packers. The kicker was McCain’s CO, Ray Nitschke.

It’s an incredibly admirable story and it reminds you that underneath the artifice of campaigns that we spend so much time trying to peel away here at MoJoBlog, there are men and women of character who seek to lead the country.

But John McCain has thrown this story into the political ring. In an interview with KDKA-TV, a Pittsburgh CBS affiliate, McCain professed his boyhood love for the Steelers and retold the charming POW story. But this time he inserted the Steelers where the Packers had been.

Any sports fan will tell you, that’s just not cool.

The McCain campaign says it was an honest mistake on the candidate’s part. Maybe. He’s certainly heard or told the story plenty of times — after he wrote about it in his book, A&E made a movie about his life in which the Packers story is told twice. McCain was asked to comment about the movie’s retelling on CNN in 2005, and he confirmed the details. He repeated that the Packers had been the team. But who knows, maybe he just had the Steelers on his mind because he was in Pittsburgh and he reimagined the story. It’s easier to accept that version of what happened, because it’s kind of sickening to have this conversation at all.

But then you have to confront the fact that there have been a lot of these honest mistakes recently. On a number of occasions, McCain has gotten his facts wrong, or forgotten his position, or failed to understand how basic policy works, leaving his campaign to spin the situation away. Pretty soon we’re going to have to hold the guy accountable for what he says like any other politician.

Bonus: The Packers/Steelers POW story was once part of John McCain’s argument against torture:

“In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear–whether it is true or false–if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse.”

Too bad that stance didn’t last long.

steelers-fiverings-nocheating.gif

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate