The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Sunday, September 28, 2008
UPDATED "I've Got a Bracelet Too..."
Is this Barack's John Kerry moment? Remember when Kerry said that if you don't get a good education, etc., you could end up in Iraq?
Fast forward to Friday night: McCain is talking about the dead serviceman's bracelet that a soldier's family asked McCain to wear to honor their son. At which Obama had his "I know you are but what am I" moment and pointed out that he too had a bracelet. However, Obama then had to look down at his notes to even recall whose bracelet it was! That in itself was pretty telling; but not nearly as telling as this:
Fast forward to Friday night: McCain is talking about the dead serviceman's bracelet that a soldier's family asked McCain to wear to honor their son. At which Obama had his "I know you are but what am I" moment and pointed out that he too had a bracelet. However, Obama then had to look down at his notes to even recall whose bracelet it was! That in itself was pretty telling; but not nearly as telling as this:
MORE ON OBAMA'S BRACELET: "Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son's name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family."
If that's true, I'm surprised the McCain folks haven't made something of it.
UPDATE: More from Uber Pig at Blackfive:
For those of you who watched Friday night's debate between McCain & Obama, you'll know there was an exchange over which candidate's position had more authority because of the bracelet he wore than the other. Background from Jake Tapper on the bracelet issue here. My take is that McCain used an appeal to my emotions to score a point against his opponent, Barack Obama. It's a well known, effective, but unfair debating tactic. An appeal to emotion can be used to justify almost anything, after all, and they keep people from getting to the truth, from arriving at objective decisions. If Obama had come out against these kinds of unfair emotional attacks, or flat out got angry and said he wouldn't take advantage of someone's personal tragedy to guilt people into supporting his political agenda, I'd have more respect for him.Authenticity? Barack Obama???
But he didn't, and I don't.
What he did is respond in kind to McCain's gut punch with this sort of a fey, pathetic, open fisted slap that fell flat because he didn't actually believe the lie he was telling; if you're going to make an unfair appeal to my emotions, you had better know the name of the soldier whose memory you are manipulationg and his story, and be able to speak of that story with authenticity.
