Presidential hopeful John McCain
© Mania.com/Josh Gordon
The Manic Maniac: McCain in the Movies
By: Joe CrosbyDate: Friday, September 05, 2008
The second in a two-part Manic Maniac Mini Series, where the maniac offers a maniacal take on the party conventions. This week: The RNC. Last week: The DNC.
"This isn't an election, this is a coup. "
You'd think coups were the sort of thing of Myanmar, Haiti and Inca civilizations of yore. The stuff of third-world or developing countries, whose structural coordination is flimsy and foundation soft, yet to be hardened by industry, technology and, most of all, money. But coups are a vibrant thing, even in the United States. At least, if we diagram Sen. John McCain's path to presidency starting back in 1967 when he was shot down in Vietnam, we'd probably be able to make a strong argument for that. That is, if we look to The Manchurian Candidate for answers.
The Manchurian Candidate follows a former soldier, a war hero, in his meticulously planned ascendency to the post of Commander in Chief (emphasis on "commander"), where his reality is constructed of his confused state of half-existence consistently struggling to fill in lapses in memory and control. And while it often seems inane to turn to fiction to analyze fact, most good fiction is merely exploring the possibilities of fact. The Manchurian Candidate is good fiction, touching on politics, science-fiction and corporatocracy, and if we were to explore the possibilities of what we know about John McCain, we'd find a brainwashed POW sent to infiltrate the United States government for the sake of absolute authority.
The VP Pick
Never before have our elections placed such an emphasis on who the presidential nominee's running mate was. Before Dick Cheney, the vice president was little more than a diplomatic errand boy, but these days, a previously insignificant part of the presidential campaign comes to the fore. On the one hand, you have a candidate in Barack Obama, who's primary mudslinging vulnerabilities are his lack of experience and foreign policy resume. Enter Sen. Joe Biden, a politician with more years in Senate than hairs in Methuselah's beard and a foreign-policy dossier that makes War and Peace look thin. Sen. John McCain, fighting a perpetually uphill battle simply because he's a Republican in an off year (after eight of them), aims to endear himself to some of the moderate base that felt disenfranchised after Hillary Clinton's ouster. Along comes Sarah Palin, the green governor of a state that could barely fill a football stadium and former mayor of a town smaller than your family, whose gender would, strategists hope, engender an influx of attention—and votes—from Hillary's Harem. Also, she's extremely young, and radical physiologists claim that if she stands next to John McCain for long enough, an osmosis-like chain reaction will cause the Senator's skin to tighten, his jaundice become healthy and hair to regain color.
In an opening sequence of The Manchurian Candidate, news media pundits claimed that "The vice-presidential nomination could determine how the delegates vote." When the presidential nominee selects Congressman Raymond Prentiss Shaw as his running mate, with some prodding, he is electing a war hero during a time of war or terrorism. Shaw (the brainwashed) isn't yet 40, and his political experience is limited to a congressional district in New York and a family name. Interestingly, his participation in politics was grounded in local dealings away from the public eye, and his nomination was a shock to everyone. "A remarkable development," said Al Franken playing a talking head. "Twenty-four hours ago, New York congressman Raymond Prentiss Shaw wasn't even being mentioned as a possible candidate for the vice-presidential nomination four years from now, much less this current convention." One thing's for sure, if Sarah Palin were watching that film this very moment, she would move her bowels directly into the seat of her pants.
Prisoners of Their Wars
What's significant about Raymond Shaw is that he personifies both seats in the republican campaign. He is the greenhorn, but he is also the war veteran who will ultimately, by the machine's device, become the most powerful man in the free world. In the 2004 remake—for a more modern comparison, we’ll use the newer version—Shaw’s unit was overcome in Iraqi-occupied territory in Kuwait during Desert Storm, taken to a remote desert location and brainwashed with a scripted (and apocryphal) depiction of the battle the endured, which would ultimately garner Shaw the Medal of Honor and a place at the political table. His prominence, however, is in contrast to who he actually was when he entered the war: A shy, angry kid coming to terms with who he was and battling the image of a family steeped in political and industrial American lore. His father was a senator. His mother was a senator. And his grandfather was something of a Rockefeller or a Vanderbilt of his time. Shaw was a recluse, not liked by many, and the opposite of what his family name suggested. So, when a behavioral modification chip is implanted in his brain, he becomes the jovial, electable Raymond Shaw who is nominated for vice president. That's who everyone sees, but underneath that confident exterior is a confused mind that struggles with nightmares about the war, inconsistencies with the story of his battlefield triumph and periods of time in his current existence that are wiped from memory. Whenever the mind controllers speak, "Sergeant Raymond Prentiss Shaw. Listen," he listens, and has no choice to do anything different.
John McCain was the son and grandson of navy admirals, the only time a father-son duo has held that post. A psychiatric evaluation in his medical files read, "He has been preoccupied with escaping the shadow of his father and establishing his own image and identity in the eyes of others. He feels his experience and performance as a POW have finally permitted this to happen." A young "maverick" at odds with who he is and where he comes from. We know that McCain was shot down in 1967, and that he spent five and a half years in a prison in Hanoi. He was known as the "crown prince" around the prison, something jailers admitted years after his release. We're not particularly sure what happened while he was being the "crown prince," though. We have his recounts of daily tortures and being asked to denounce his country. But this is a man who was being beaten daily and spent—according to him—two years in solitary confinement. Take the average person walking down the sidewalk and dump him in a room the size of a shoebox that smells of mildew and rat feces and make him sit there for 730 days, and he's bound to come out a little tweaked. Not least of which, is that we have no idea the tactics involved in attempting to coerce the minds of prisoners, because it's the coerced who trying to recount them. So, what impact, really, did more than half a decade have on the republican nominee for president? How do we know that torturous practices and an ego driven to survive them, and a family name, didn't produce a monster whose consciousness disappears into hallucination when the most important decisions are to be made, and what we instead receive at the belligerent inclinations of a man who after years of feeling powerless, needs for once to be powerful.
The far more likely scenario, of course, is that John McCain is really just like X-Men's faux-Senator Kelly, and some blue-hued shape shifting freak named Mystique is acting out his every move according to the wishes of a man who can move metal with his mind. Either way, the prospect of this POW in the White House keeps me awake at night.
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Obama is kinda like Moby Dick, that he's so obsessed with the presidency that he'll do anything for it.
McCain is kinda like Darth Vader, that his life is so full of abuse that he doesn't realize he's entered the dark side until its too late.
Obama is kinda like Hannibal Lector, that he's so charming you don't even notice when he's drugged you and cooked your brain.
McCain is kinda like the Joker, that he's recklessly evil for anarchy's own sake.
Obama is kinda like Maverick, that he sleeps with Jodie Foster and wins poker tournaments.
See where I'm going with this, Tasha Yar? You can relate any real person to any fictional person and transfer traits that aren't really there. Yes, fiction does frequently mirror reality, but we only see that mirror after getting out of a very long, very hot shower. Yeah, I'm all against the Grand Oldies have another smack at running the country, but that has more to do with where they put us then who they're looking to put in next. Using movies to justify your arguments is weak. Unless. Wait. Is this high school english class? Because if it is, I totally take that back. No? It's not? Yeah, man. Weak.
I do applaud the attempt to include genre into politics, but this is shallow at best.
Hilary is kinda like T-Bag, that she'll eat mexicans in the desert.