McCain’s “Cross in the Dirt” story may be complete bullshit (UPDATED)
Surprise face.
Either John McCain had the exact same experience as Alexander Solzhenitsyn or he stole it from Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.” I’d guess the latter.
Coincidentally, by which I mean “not coincidentally,” it looks like McCain is a fan of Solzhenitsyn.
UPDATE: Dday has more:
Last night, John McCain, he of the Pinocchio problem, retold the story for the Saddleback Church congregants about his time in the Hanoi Hilton (John McCain is very reluctant to talk about his POW experience), when a guard loosened his ropes and, later, on Christmas, drew a cross in the sand, in solidarity with McCain the prisoner, a simple expression of faith. The crowd loved it…Now there’s the revelation that the story of the cross is remarkably similar to a possibly apocryphal story attributed to the late Aleksander Solzhenitsyn.
But then Dday puts it in the proper perspective:
I don’t actually care about stuff like this. I find it much more relevant and vital that McCain was quicker to begin the invasion of Iraq after 9-11 than even Bush and Cheney, or that he believes in his personal grandiosity so much that he imagines skirmishes on the Russo-Georgian border to be world-historical events that demand action, or that his health care plan would literally cover about 5% of those currently uninsured, or that he wants to continue Bush’s policies of inequality by cutting taxes massively for the rich, or that he thinks anyone who makes less than $5 million a year isn’t rich, and on and on. Stories about politicians embellishing parts of their personal biography for dramatic effect are fairly routine and show little more than that they’re… ambitious politicians, looking to connect emotionally with voters to gain an advantage. Remember how Ronald Reagan convinced himself that he served in World War II? Hillary Clinton’s “sniper fire” in Tuzla? Barack Obama’s book actually admits that characters are invented and time compressed. So this is nothing new. And I wish ALL of it were ignored, because the thin strand connecting these gaffes and exaggerations to the actual character of the nominee is tenuous at best.
UPDATE TWO: More evidence.
August 17, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Wait.
You didn’t know that was just a made-up story?
You thought it really happened? Like when he said his interrogators asked him to give up names and he gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers, unless he was telling the story in Pittsburgh, then he told them the names of the Steel Curtain, even though it was years before there even WAS the Steel Curtain?
Look, these a war stories, like fishing stories – they’re STORIES!
Do you honestly believe that if McCain told the complete truth he’d even be the nominee right now?
August 17, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Well, I didn’t watch the stupid thing last night, so I’m just now catching up.
August 18, 2008 at 1:24 pm
So if two people have a similar experience, one of them HAS to be lying?
The early Christians–first century– used the “Ichthys” (Jesus fish) symbol in the same fashion.
August 18, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Johnny can always blame it on Alzheimers. Beating up on an old guy with a bad memory. Oh lordy, give him the nuclear button and he’ll forget where he left it. Not such a bad thing. LOL.
August 18, 2008 at 4:55 pm
it seems that the first time this cross story showed up, McCain told it about an American prisoner (not himself) it has since morphed, he is now the prisoner. Is it dementia or lies?
Story originally came from:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” – 1973 (of whom McCain is a fan)
THE 2000 CAMPAIGN; Excerpt From McCain’s Speech:
Many years ago a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam was tied in torture ropes by his tormentors and left alone in an empty room to suffer through the night. Later in the evening a guard he had never spoken to entered the room and silently loosened the ropes to relieve his suffering. Just before morning, that same guard came back and re-tightened the ropes before his less humanitarian comrades returned. He never said a word to the grateful prisoner, but some months later, on a Christmas morning, as the prisoner stood alone in the prison courtyard, the same good Samaritan walked up to him and stood next to him for a few moments. Then with his sandal, the guard drew a cross in the dirt. Both prisoner and guard both stood wordlessly there for a minute or two, venerating the cross, until the guard rubbed it out and walked away.
NY Times 2000 link to McCain’s Nov 2000 speech: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904EFDE1239F93AA15751C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
is he demented, is he lying, or is he in first stage of Alzheimer’s
August 19, 2008 at 4:32 am
Rich, that could easily be him telling the story about himself in a sort of outside looking in perspective. People do it all the time. You know like “one night there was this man who sat at his computer and typed out a reply comment on a thread” and I’m talking about myself. Yanno? I really don’t care one way or another if it happened to him, I personally don’t believe him, but just because he told the story in 2000 like that doesn’t negate that he was not talking about himself. Afterall, he doesn’t like mentioning himself in the POW camp much.
Joe
August 19, 2008 at 4:37 am
Oh, i know, he totally hates it.
So much.
Really.
In fact, I forget he was in a POW camp sometimes.
Because he never talks about it.
Because he hates talking about it.