A Ruckus in the McCain campaign

Senator McPander hits new lows

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Election2008/ruckus.htm
8/26/08

Is Uncle Ruckus working in the McCain campaign as his advisor on Negro Affairs or something?

Uncle Ruckus is perhaps the most demented character on TV, a large, slovenly black man who absolutely detests all black people and worships the white man’s god, Ronald Reagan. He is virulently racist, and will spout lines like “That’s a fine pair of pickaninnies you’s got there” or “Just because you is half white doesn’t mean you isn’t all nigrah.”

If you’re shaking your head and going, “Whoa! I haven’t seen anything like THAT on American television!” the answer is that he’s a character in “Boondocks,” a late night cartoon on the Cartoon network, produced by Aaron McGruder, who also did the comic strip of the same name and based on the same characters – minus, of course, Ruckus, who would have been a bit much for newspaper editors to handle. The cartoon network, late at night, has some of the boldest and most original social satire to be found. Strange as it seems.

If Ruckus was a McCain advisor, he might say something like, “Senator, you know and I know that that boy you’re running against ain’t nothing but an uppity high-yellow who’s learned to hide his inner nigger.” He would discourse on how Obama is “passin’ in both directions at once” and explain to McCain that if he wanted to get some of the black vote (“Although gawd knows why you would want it, it ain’t worth shit”), he was going to have to work on his “nigger cred.”

OK, OK, watch the show. I’m not making it up. That’s how Ruckus is. Honest. He’s really that nasty. The show itself is much better than I’m making it sound, informed as it is by Aaron McGruder’s moral outrage. It shows the utter absurdity of racism.

How else do you explain McCain getting on stage with one of the nastier gangsta rap “artists” around, and receiving his endorsement?

Now, Daddy Yankee isn’t even black. He’s Puerto Rican, and his brand of music, reggaeton, is a Latin backbeat to hiphop. It’s just as raunchy, and appeals to bedrock Republican values with lines like “the sound of the niggaz is a universal language” and “I got my nigga and my gun we open fire, You better get out of my way coz I'm a rider.”

Just the kind of stuff you want your kids singing in Sunday school, right?

Anyway, Ruckus, or somebody similarly crazy, convinced the confused John McCain that it was in his best interest to get up on stage with this guy and accept his ringing endorsement because of his stand on immigration reform.

It’s not quite clear how championing immigration reform for Puerto Ricans – who are, in fact, Americans – is going to gain McCain support among wealthy white Republicans. They figure that Puerto Ricans should be maids, or playing outfield for the Mets, and that the only Puerto Rican they ever liked was Natalie Wood in “West Side Story.”

When it comes to rap music singers, the difference between Puerto Ricans and blacks is even more obscure to Republicans than the difference between Sunni and Shi’ite. Another distinction, incidently, of which McCain seems blissfully unaware.

A reporter lucky enough to witness this great moment in campaign history, Jordan Levin, wrote “On Monday morning the Republican candidate got some new Gasolina when he appeared with reggaeton star Daddy Yankee at Central High School in Phoenix, Arizona.” Levin went on to explain that aside from pushing the immigration issue, McCain also wanted to bridge the generational gap, and so appeared with Daddy at a predominately Latino high school in Phoenix.

Well, maybe someone forgot to tell McCain that high schoolers and immigrants are not considered major voting blocs because they are not allowed to vote.

I actually agree with McCain on the immigration issue, and think it’s good when a politician tries to reach out to kids. If McCain had appeared with someone else, someone who doesn’t sing gangsta, it might have been a good session for the senator. He is trying to resurrect his former reputation as a maverick, and he would have done much better attracting moderates with moderate positions over his habit since 2000 of pandering to the right.

Only now, he’s pandering to...um, gangsta rappers? I don’t think that’s going to help him with either his base or moderates.

Even Michelle Malkin, a woman who would loan her sexual organs to Paris Hilton for a night on the town before criticizing a Republican, was openly mortified and condemned McCain for this.

It was yet another “Dukakis-in-the-tank” moment, along with all the other blunders and gaffes he’s made.

And now the media outside of Jon Stewart is beginning to notice them. Even his bad habit of constantly evoking his status as a former POW is beginning to draw ridicule. Rudy Guiliani constantly evoked 9/11 and his role as “America’s mayor” to the point where someone described a typical Guiliani statement as “A noun, a verb, and 9/11." Similarly, McCain is being dismissed as “A noun, a verb, and POW.”

His blunder in forgetting how many homes he owned caused him substantial ridicule (Joseph Biden, the Democratic VP nominee, painted an eloquent picture of McCain sweating how to pay the bills whilst sitting at his seven kitchen tables) and he went on Leno to try and counterbalance the opening night of the Democratic Convention. It didn’t go well:

LENO: "For a million dollars, how many houses do you have?"

SEN. McCAIN: "Could I just mention to you, Jay, that, at a moment of seriousness. I spent five-and-a-half years in a prison cell," McCain said. "I didn't have a house. I didn't have a kitchen table. I didn't have a table. I didn't have a chair. And I didn't spend those five-and-a-half years because, not because I wanted to get a house when I got out."

What’s next? “Say, I used to be a POW. Any chance I can get my parking validated?” “I was entitled to steal that money because I used to be a POW” “Could you please donate? I used to be a POW.”

At this point, I think even Uncle Ruckus would have his head sorrowfully and conclude that in order to behave like that, “McCain must have a drop of Negro blood in him somewhere.”

Nah. He’s just an idiot, is all.