The Press Box - The Complex Legacy That John McCain Leaves Behind | Damage Control (Ep. 518)

Episode Date: August 30, 2018

This week on 'Damage Control,' The Ringer’s Justin Charity and Kate Knibbs discuss the complicated feelings that come with mourning late Senator John McCain (0:47). Then they investigate why the Twitter persona of former Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become so fascinating (24:19). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibbs. Welcome to Damage Control on the Channel 33 Network, a podcast where we unpack what upsets, excites, and divides us in popular culture. The newest addition to weird Twitter is especially weird. A former Iranian president and generally esoteric person, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been tweeting,

and we have feelings about this. But first, John McCain died last week. A huge portion of the country mourned, but there were some notable exceptions, like Donald Trump. We're going to talk about how people are processing this major American death. Okay, so Kate, John McCain served six years in Vietnam. He served 31 years in the U.S. Senate. And last week, John McCain died. He died at the end of a year-long, slightly more than year-long battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

answer. So McCain's death and his legacy are notable for a lot of different reasons. But he spent the last couple of years of his life and political career nursing this very bitter and spectacular feud with Donald Trump. Donald Trump mocked McCain's military career, like right at the start of his presidential campaign. He said something basically to the effect of like John McCain, you know, got shot down in Vietnam and captured. And I prefer war heroes who weren't captured by the enemy. So fucking rude. Yeah. And it's like one of those early Donald Trump saying something moments, saying something about someone moments that everyone thought would be the end of Donald Trump's career as a Republican politician until he went on to win the Republican nomination and then

the presidency, obviously. But it's weird. I think. I think McCain's feud with Trump gradually underscored a lot of people's favorite qualities about McCain, because McCain has this, he has a temper, for one. He is sort of this brawling, bruising guy who will trade insults, like real ad hominemes with his political rivals. And he does have this sort of righteous unpredictability that contrast with Trump's vicious unpredictability. right? They seem like McCain and Trump seem like these faded rivals. And so McCain's death is this strange moment where I think the statesman who is the more conventional of the two of them and I think

is a bit more universally or broadly, let's say, beloved between the two of them, sort of he's gone and Trump remains. And I think that that's left a lot of hurt feelings. Definitely. And speaking of hurt feelings, so basically this whole week is filled with like memorial services. Like today is Wednesday and there's a memorial service in Arizona. And I know Joe Biden is speaking at that. And then on Friday there's a memorial service.

Over the weekend, there's a memorial service in D.C. Obama's speaking at one of them, right? Right. Obama and George Bush are both going to speak. at McCain's memorial service. Meanwhile, Trump is not only not attending, he was disinvited from one of John McCain's final, you know, in the final months of his life, there were news stories about how, yeah, you know, him and his wife, Cindy McCain, you know, let it be known that, hey, Trump, don't come to my funeral. So it's been sort of an awkward week in terms

of memorializing McCain because usually think about it. It's like this sort of big Republican politician dies and you'd think that like the, I mean, the current president as a Republican, normally there would be, if you think back to like when Reagan died, right, Bush was president when Reagan died. And so there's this sense in which the party sort of rallies behind the legacy of this crucial figure in its party. Whereas meanwhile, because Trump and McCain had this feud, Trump is in this awkward position where he just clearly does not want to talk about McCain a lot.

And it kind of makes Trump look weak because even though Trump obviously survives McCain and he's the most powerful Republican in the world, he also, there's this weird air to Trump sort of resisting, celebrating McCain that just makes him look like a dipshit or a sore loser or whatever you want to call him, especially as all these other people, including Barack Obama, who's not even a Republican, instead of emerging to pay tributes to McCain. Yeah, it's been interesting to see Trump be silent on something. It's also, I don't know, I've been having this weird sensation because Trump and I sort of responded to McCain's death in the same way, which I feel very uncomfortable when I, whenever I realize that me and Trump are behaving the same way. Like, I was not a fan of John McCain, but I just, so I didn't really, I didn't, I haven't really

been saying anything about his death because I just felt like I didn't have anything to add. Trump has been doing the same thing. Like, the silence on his end has been interesting. And then, uh, the whole flag debacle was another thing. Like, people were mad that the White House didn't properly display the flag. half-mast for long enough. I honestly thought that was a little overblown. I think the half-mask thing is like a super weird tradition.

But, yeah, it's been, I don't know, I've been sort of struggling with, like, how to process McCain's death. I was talking to you a little bit about this earlier, but like it feels very significant because it does feel like the death of a type of politician in addition to an individual. He was known as the Maverick, but he also in many ways represented this sort of fairly standard, moderate Republican domestically, I guess, very warmongering Republican in foreign affairs. But he represented the strain of Republican that seems to be a dying breed. Part of it generationally is weird. McCain is weird generationally, right?

Because in terms of his political career, right, he's only a senator. since the late 80s. So there's a sense in which, like, he had a long Senate career, but he's not, you know, it's not like he's some old school, like, Nixon-era senator who, like,

he obviously lived to an old age. And he has a military, he has a famous military career that predates his political career. But McCain is a strange example of, you talk about him being a certain kind of politician, it's not even purely because of the time he entered the Senate or the time he entered the Republican Party. I think it actually really just has a lot to do with his background. Like, because think about it, a lot of it is tied up in

the fact that he fought in Vietnam and is generally like celebrated as a war hero. And so that that underscores why a fight over how long. the White House wanted to fly the U.S. flag at half-mast would be salient in a way that it might not be quite as salient with any other senator, right? The fact that John McCain served in the military during wartime and that that's such a prominent part of his resume, I think that's why the flag thing became a fight, you know? Oh, yeah, and the fact that, like, Trump was such a dick about McCain's military service and the fact that Trump did not serve in the military. I'm like that all definitely played into it too.

Right. What's the old quote from Trump about dodging STDs in the 1970s was his version of Vietnam? Like that's the contrast really sort of between McCain and Trump. You're right though. It's just sort of like he, Trump is, this isn't one of those things though, where, Trump is being indecent and maybe 80% of people in his party disagree with him, allegedly, but then there's a healthy, there's like this solid faction of people who are the Trumpian block. It seems like Trump is just the one guy who can't, in the Republican Party at least, right?

Trump is just the one guy who's on the wrong side of this entire moment of, of, you know, being in John McCain's week. but I also, I'm kind of with you. I think I, you and I both struggle to process John McCain as a political figure. And I think this is a real thing, right? John McCain ran for president in 2000 against Bush. He loses the Rocholgan nomination of Bush. He runs for president in 2008. He wins the nomination, loses against Obama and the general, right?

And I think through all that from 2000 onward is when you really start to see his political presence take on this myth. And his myth is the word everyone uses is Maverick, right? You'll, I mean, that's the word that McCain himself uses, his, his PR flaxes, and a lot of people use when talking about John McCain. But it's really, I would actually use different words. I would say McCain's politics were this politics of candor, right? You know, people play up the idea that John McCain was notable because he was a moderate

Republican. and that's not entirely true. The thing that I think was different about him is that he just talked about his politics differently. He was just sort of curt and like to the point about a lot of things. And I think that that's notable in a certain way. Like I think I definitely see what people would want to celebrate about that as a political ideal. But it's a much smaller thing than talking about John McCain's actual political legacy, right?

Because talking about him being a maverick or talking about him being a straight talker, that's celebrating a style more than it's celebrating an actual political legacy of a person who had real power for 31 years in the United States government. Yeah. And I think it's been tricky to detangle the two like right after his death because people have been so eager to play up. the whole maverick reputation. And I never liked McCain. I really disagreed with his politics. I thought he was overall deeply harmful to both America and the world. But I did as far as someone who is my like ideological opponent went, I did admire the fact that he was occasionally willing to deviate from like Republican Party lines. It's weird that like that the bar is so low that I was like, oh, good job, the times that he did not go along with the really harmful politics of his party.

I don't know. I just feel like there's a lot getting lost in the way that he's getting talked about in death. Like there, it's possible to admire someone and think they were a bad person at the same time. It's possible to like someone personally and think that they were harmful. and like we're not really having those conversations. It's either like people making him into a legend already or people being like he actually sucked the whole time. There just doesn't seem to be a lot.

There's like not a lot of middle ground. We should talk about the second half of that. I don't know. Because there's a second half to this argument that's not Trump and is not on the right at all, but it's on the left. And the left half of the chorus is the John McCain actually sucked always the whole time. And he sucked. And, you know, the subject's being like, who cares that John McCain is dead or it's good that John McCain is dead.

You know what I mean? Like those people at least are trying to engage with John McCain's actual politics. And also, frankly, with the actual politics of the U.S. war in. Vietnam in a way that John McCain's admirers are not at all trying to do. Like, they're at least trying to, they're at least trying to have a conversation about politics and about political legacy. But they're also doing it in this way that feels like an overcorrection. Our listeners are going to learn a lot about us.

But when Jerry, do you remember when Jerry Falwell died? Yes. The way a lot of people on like left Twitter acting about John McCain, I was like that when Jerry Falwell died. And I don't even regret that. But I think of people like Falwell or Scalia, who I have thought in that exact way. And I simultaneously believe that John McCain was, you know, a right-wing senator who had, I think, especially with regard to foreign policy, like a lot of bad sort of, like, he was a powerful American senator who had a bad outlook on a lot of things. and his bad outlook affected a lot of people and a lot of regions of the world.

But I also, for some reason, and maybe it's just because my brain has been broken by years of John McCain's marketing, but it's just I can't think of him the same way I think of Jerry Falwell. I can't think of John McCain the way I think of Antonin Scalia. And again, maybe it's just that ultimately on some level, it worked. Like the hagiography worked because so much of this, it feels like it was a long game to turn John McCain into a sort of contemporary equivalent of a founding father. You know, like the way we think of the founding fathers, you can have actual political debates about them and their ethics and their politics and their political disagreements among them. But I think on a basic level, when you talk about the founding fathers, you're really just gesturing at a sort of cartoon. You're basically gesturing at the schoolhouse rock cartoon of the founding fathers who are vaguely good people, right?

Or who had like good ideas. Debateably. Yeah, good ideas maybe. No, but that's what I mean. In the schoolhouse rock version of the founding fathers, right? They are sort of unambiguously like good and cool. Sally Hemings isn't involved. I feel like that's what the project is surrounding a John McCain.

Yeah, totally because I've been having the same sort of reaction where like I fully, I hated so much of McCain's politics, but my response to his death has been very different. Like when Scalia died, I was like good riddance. Whereas with McCain, I have this sort of melancholy feeling that like the old, my old enemy is dead and I left him a lot better than my new enemy. Like he had some honor to him because I don't know. I guess I really did admire like his motivation even though it was naive. And like the, I don't know. I just thought that there was something about him that was genuine. So yeah, maybe his, maybe I read the David Foster Wallace like travelogue too many times.

Maybe I, maybe I fell hookline and sinker for a political. personal but I definitely I guess I did like I I'm sad that my Republican enemy isn't at least like sort of charming and played by Ed Harris and HBO biopics

and like now he was I don't know he was like a much better enemy than than Trump and his ilk yeah I think that's why the part of me that admired John McCain despite the bigger part of me that like

loathed him and thought he was really harmful, has had a hard time, like, grappling with, like, the, he sucked all along narrative. I'm like, yes, he obviously did suck all along. But should that be what we're focusing on? I don't know. Yeah, I just, the he sucked all along narrative isn't, I don't think it's substantively problematic.

I just, you know, I think of, in the wake of McCain's death, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the socialist hero of the moment here in New York, tweeted what I thought was like a pretty benign, like, you know,

he was an admirable, you know, she basically tweeted, like, he was an admirable guy, our hearts are with his family at this time. And I just watched left Twitter lose it. Like, I just watched people lose it and basically tag that tweet as evidence that

either Ocasio-Cortez is a sellout or that it at the very least signified some sign of weakness that like once she finally gets to Congress, she's basically going to become Susan Collins. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Everyone just sort of read that tweet and they were like, she, oh, this woman's a mark. Like, we thought she was a socialist and instead she's some willy-nilly center-left dip shit. And that to me is why I, every time I want to engage with the like, nah, let's talk about, let's talk about John McCain's voting right here. Let's talk about his amorphous outlook on torture and warfare.

Let's talk about the Iraq War. Let's talk about the Vietnam War. Every time my brain gets to that, I see Left Twitter losing it over tweets of condol-like, you know, pretty standardized tweets of condolences. and I'm just like, I don't, I don't want to be on any side of this, this debate. It all, it sounds like people who are raised by the Heritage Foundation versus people who were raised in caves. Like, it just, it's just like, I don't want anything to do with any of these people. Oh, meaning, I mean, yeah, it's like the, the leftist critiques, I'm like, I like,

I like what you're trying to say, but I hate the way you're trying to say it. And then the right. And but then I was, I don't know, I've been very cranky about the response to this death in general. Like, it's making me very curmudgeonly. Like the Akazio-Cortez tweet to me was like, obviously she's going to tweet that. She's running for office. If you thought she was some like extreme radical. She would be a socialist activist and not a socialist candidate for the United States Congress.

Yeah, I'm like, she's a politician. She's going to tweet that. Like it just seemed like the most. bizarre thing to flip out about, especially because, like, leftists have a reputation for, like, naivete and, like, expecting someone who is running for office not to comment in a benign way on, like, this very lionized American political figure is very naive and disappointing. I'm like, everyone, just get it together. Let's vote her into office.

She's fine. she's not going to be your hero. She's a politician. There's no good politicians. She's better than the other ones. Just give her a break. I don't know. On a scale of zero to 10,

how much are you looking forward to George Bush addressing the nation at McCain's memorial service? I'm going to go. Can we go into the negatives? Oh, no. I actually, you know what? And that's one of those things too. It's like John McCain.

McCain obviously has this, again, he has this reputational project surrounding him and sort of enshrining his legacy. And it's like, meanwhile, George Bush, I think more so than McCain, is this guy who in the past, certainly since Trump became a politician, is this guy who I think in a lot of people's esteem has kind of skyrocketed in the rankings just because everyone seems to have for, for, for, The aughts, they've forgotten all of the, you know, the worst years of the Iraq war. And I just, I feel like when Bush is in front of cameras at McCain's Memorial Service, it's basically going to be this debate all over again, but with George Bush. Because people are going to do the whole like, well, you know, Bush was a bad president, but man, he was friendly. Yeah.

And like, oh, isn't he goofy? And it's just, it's going to bug me probably way more. more than the McCain stuff does because I have in George Bush sucks yeah I'm like I'm like I have I had that part of me that admired McCain and I have no part of me that admires W I mean the only way I would be excited to hear W's mcane speech is if instead of speaking he just like whipped up a watercolor on the spot like who was that guy who painted on TV you know what I'm talking about Bob Ross I know you're

If he Bob Rossed it If he Bob Rossed it I would be into that You know what Bush is going to do Which is he's going to laugh at his own jokes About McCain And he's just going to like He's going to turn which should be a somber address

Into like a weird Well-intentioned roast of John McCain And I feel like that's what Bush is going to do Maybe or he'll do like the Madonna Aretha Franklin thing Well he'll just like ramble on about what McCain did for him Um One thing we haven't talked about, which I want to briefly touch on, just like Sarah Palin, man, McCain did lose.

He loosed Sarah Palin on America. Like, obviously he can never be forgiven for that. But where has she been in all this? Like, have you, has she said anything? That's a good point. Yeah, I haven't heard anything from Sarah Palin, despite her national profile having literally been made by running for vice president under McCain. I know. I don't know what she.

She going to pop up? anywhere. I don't, I don't know. I'm curious if there was like, I'm curious what she's up to in general in a sick way. Because I want, I actually find like Sarah Palin's steep descent into not matter, like irrelevancy, sort of inspiring. Like sometimes I think of her and I'm like, maybe that could happen to Trump. Yeah, I mean, well, personal irrelevancy. sure, but I definitely think that the legacy of Sarah Palin is still with us, courtesy of John McCain.

Speaking of old George W. Bush rivals, former Iranian president Mahmoud Akpadanajad was not a good president, nor is he a good person. I should not laugh because he really is not a good person. He is openly homophobic. He has questioned the Holocaust. He probably committed election fraud. And like last but extremely not least, he is a murderer who has been on trial for crimes against humanity. There's ample evidence that he assassinated Kurdish politicians and tortured and killed political prisoners. Akhmedinajad is a bad dude. George W. Bush was wrong about basically everything in his presidency except for Ahmadinejad's badness. Um, so I, I, Out of all the politicians in the world, Akhmedanajad does not deserve an image rehabilitation.

And that's why I want to talk to you about what's happening with his Twitter account, because it's like disturbingly charming. And Akhmedan has sort of become this like weird Twitter, dad joke figure on the internet. And it's, I'm upset about it because I keep seeing his tweets and starting to, like, weird Twitter, dad joke figure on the internet. And it's, I'm upset about it because I keep seeing his tweets and starting to, like him and then I have to like give my head a shake and think about what a horrible human being he is. And it's a very strange phenomenon. Akkaddenajad. Okay, so first of all, the reason Kate and I were talking about this amongst ourselves is because he's not even, I would say Acquid Dejad is not even at the level of Twitter celebrity yet. It's more so that we just noticed

that he seems to be on track. Like, he is the successor to share on Twitter. I am calling that shot now. and that's a weird thing, I admit, to call about Mahmoudatimad. But he basically had this tweet a few days ago that went modestly viral, but it is about Serena Williams. And I'll read the tweet. The tweet says, why is the French Open disrespecting Serena Williams? Unfortunately, some people in all countries, including my country, haven't realized the true meaning of freedom.

Now, first of all, Kate, do you want to explain real quick what he's talking about with regard to Serena Williams and disrespect? Yes. So Serena Williams wore a cat suit at the French Open, and the tennis officials criticized Williams for her choice of costume. They said it wasn't respectful of the traditions of tennis. And so people were upset about that, obviously, because she can wear whatever she wants. She's the best tennis player in the world. And one of the people upset about that was Akhmedinajad, which is kind of mind-blowing to have him on Twitter standing up for a woman's freedom to wear whatever she wants. So when he famously led a administration that, you know, had a very different approach to what women wore, to say the least. But it's that, but it's also the fact that it's the weird dissonance of mockery.

Muhammad Ahmadinejad, of all people, defending a black woman athlete who in the United States is famously dogged by all sorts of concern trolling, especially within the context of her sport. Right. And so it's like weird to watch Mahmoud Ahmad Ahmadinejad do more to side with Serena Williams than I think anyone in the actual sport of tennis. And, yeah, and it's just insane because, like, Williams was criticized. for like not dressing modestly enough

and that was sort of his whole thing with women like it just is very strange and then of course it's also novel that he's even on he's been on Twitter for a while but it remains bizarre because you know Iran doesn't have

the same internet freedoms as a lot of Western countries the whole thing is just there's like seven weird layers to this um It's also, so, okay, those are his sports tweets. Do you want to read his, okay, I'm going to pull up his other sports tweet.

His most, his most sort of famous one, which is why I was calling it dad Twitter, because it really is the most dad thing. It's like a photo of him sitting in front of a laptop, like pressing button, oh, looking at his own Twitter, tweeting. Right, he's looking at his own Twitter page. And he says, had a busy day today, but I always make time for. hashtag Twitter. Right. Just classic. But then, like, interspersed with these sort of surprising tweets, there's, like, he'll also tweet,

like, oh, he tweets at Donald Trump all the time. That's the other, like, insane thing he does. Yes. Well, but, okay, but you say insane, but really, it's like when you actually read his tweets at Donald Trump, they read, like, resistance Twitter. That's why it's uncanny, because it doesn't. It doesn't read as insane. It doesn't read as unhinged in a sort of the way you would think, you know, an unpopular authoritarian or retired authoritarian leader would sound like that.

He just sounds like Robert Mueller Twitter. Yeah, like one of those Krasstien brothers. He's like, sir, Mr. Donald Trump, sir. Right, right. So here's one tweet that we can where his interest in tweeting at Trump. coincides with his interest in American athletes. I'm going to read this. Mr. Real Donald Trump.

And so that's Trump's tag on Twitter. Mr. Real Donald Trump. In my opinion, everyone, especially a president, should love all and not differentiate between them. I love LeBron James and Michael Jordan, Ralph Mahmoud, and all athletes, and wish them all the best. And that's obviously... That's in the wake of the latest round of feuding between LeBron James and the White House. Yes. Ron James and Donald Trump.

But like that's a very, you know, that's just one of Ahmadinejad's many tweets where he's either tweeting at Trump about popular culture or tweeting at Trump about, like, terrorism and currency controls. And it's just, it is strange because it's, you know, there's a sort of trope. when it comes to a lot of like political Twitter of the fact that so many people oppose Trump from different corners of political life that they've created this coalition of people that doesn't really make any sense. So it'll be like Rex Tillerson is part of the resistance because Rex Tillerson sort of unceremoniously got sort of booted out of the Secretary of State role. And so Mahmoud Akhmud Akhnejad's Twitter just reads like, Akhmedinajad, welcome to the resistance. Like that's what the whole feed reads like. It's so weird. It's interspersed with dad jokes and photos of him looking like a fly guy.

It's interesting. I don't know. It's upsetting to me because I'm like every rational part of my being is like this man is evil. But then now I have I'm like into his Twitter account. I unfollowed it because I was like, don't follow a war criminal. But I like enjoy his Twitter and I even despite myself. even though I know I should not be like even engaging with this person. I'm starting to understand like I'm getting a window into the minds of people who like Donald Trump's tweets, I think.

I think. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what. I'll read one more tweet before we go and this will help remind you why you unfollowed. Okay. Okay. Here you go.

This is Ahmedizadezsche's latest tweet. Mr. Real Donald Trump. The Zionists are always. causing problems for the American people. So real issues are not concentrated on. Hashtag Zionist plot. Hashtag Zionism is not Judaism. Hashtag Zionism is not Judaism.

Okay, okay. I'm definitely not going to smash the follow button ever again. It was a terrible mistake. But yeah, this is just, oh, man. I feel like the roller coaster of emotions that I've had in regard to, regards to Akhvedinajad's Twitter is like more evidence that Twitter is is distorting global politics beyond recognition. Oh, man.

Wait, okay, my one question to you is, do you think he's writing his own tweets? Oh, he's definitely writing these tweets. I think he's trained his whole life to write these tweets. I think he does push-ups. I think he does 10 push-ups before he sends each tweet. Oh, my gosh. These tweets are too real to be ghostwritten. Honestly, making yourself do 10 push-ups before you're allowed to tweet is not a bad policy.

I might start. Well, just call it the Akhman then-a-shot policy. All right, I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibs. And we'll see you all again in two weeks on Damage Control.