My Holiday With McCain* (see below)

(*I am publishing part of this with a link to the rest, but also attempting to authenticate - This article was sent to me by my friend Ben, who hails from Indonesia. Another person emailed me that their original copy came from someone in Bali. According to The Bruce Blog there are some questions about the piece and efforts are being made to verify it.)

It was just before John McCain's last run at the presidential nomination in 2000 that my husband and I vacationed in Turtle Island in Fiji with John McCain, Cindy, and their children, including Bridget (their adopted Bangladeshi child). It was not our intention, but it was our misfortune to be in close quarters with John McCain for almost a week since Turtle Island has a small number of bungalows and their focus on communal meals force all vacationers who are there at the same time to get to know each other intimately.

He arrived at our first group meal and started reading quotes from a pile of William Faulkner books with a forest of Post-Its sticking out of them. As an English Literature major myself, my first thought was "if he likes this so much, why hasn't he memorized any of this yet?" I soon realized that McCain actually thought we had come on vacation to be a volunteer audience for his "readings" which then became a regular part of each meal. Out of politeness, none of the vacationers initially protested at this intrusion into their blissful holiday, but people's buttons definitely got pushed as the readings continued day after day.

Unfortunately this was not his only contribution to our mealtime entertainment. He waxed on during one meal about how Indo-Chine women had the best figures and that our American corn-fed women just couldn't meet up to this standard. He also made it a point that all of us should stop Cindy from having dessert as her weight was too high and made a few comments to Amy, the 25 year old wife of the honeymooning couple from Nebraska that she should eat less as she needed to lose weight.

Go to this link if you want to read the rest of the story and also the comments. If you can shed any further light on it, please comment at this blog or his. I also agree with the commenter here who just didn't want to pursue the potential racism of McCain, even if it exists, as it reintroduces a negative element. Believe me, there are other articles and videos which document swearing at inappropriate times (losing it), rudeness, vileness, bad jokes (including ethnic) by McCain so I am not protecting him!

Comments

[concerned]

Kathy Sreedhar is not the author of this . The author is anasuya dubey.

[Slugbug]

That's what I hear - but is that substantiated? The comments at the Blog I posted say McCain did indeed take a Fiji holiday at the time in question, according to one of his biographies. Will some of the others who might have been subjected to the relentless Faulkner and pinches please come forward?

[gabrielle]

I am an Obama supporter. But after receiving the McCain/Fiji email I have been thinking a lot about this story going around and my take on it is that it’s not helpful to Obama (whom I support whole-heartedly) and that spreading it poses some severe problems.

I think it’s not helpful to Obama because it will insert the race card into the presidential campaign from the side of Obama supporters – even though McCain supposedly called his own adopted daughter an “ugly black thing.” I have to say that I found everything in the story believable except for that comment. Obviously this part of the story cannot be verified because McCain supposedly said this in person only to the writer of it. But even if it were true, McCain would,of course, deny it as a smear and a lot of people would be outraged.
McCain has said in the past that anyone who uses his adopted daughter just to make a smear on him should burn in hell. And people would probably feel for him and his daughter.
But I also think that it is a terrible thing to do to his daughter. How long will it take until someone will say to her “Oh, you know, your dad called you an ugly black thing.”

Just for that reason I cannot go with this letter. There is only heartbreak in pursuing it.

I don’t mean to push this on anyone, but want to insert this as food for thought. I have gotten very mindful about what to put out on behalf of campaigning. Obama has so many good qualities that I can support that I think this is not necessary.

Sincerely,
Gabrielle Viethen

[Slugbug]

No, I agree - in fact I may shorten it so that if someone wants to read it they go to the link.
& I'm trying to track down where it really came from.

[Ck]

It's authentic. My brother knows the author personally. Apparently, she's getting a lot of flak from the GoP for it. The little piece wasn't supposed to go viral -- it was something she just wrote for her friends and family. Despite her request not to make it public, I guess some people did, and it quickly went viral.