Slinging Some Mud on a Terrible Article

I’m a bit ashamed to say that I’m about to sling some mud—on a really terrible article about McCain. While researching for the previous blog entry (“The Candidates on Education: Toying with Our Emotions?”), I dug up an International Herald Tribune article about McCain’s family, written by someone named Jennifer Steinhauer. Please feel free to check it out: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/27/america/27mccainkids.php.

As I read “The McCain family: Bridging 2 marriages and 4 decades, a large, close-knit brood,” I was completely baffled. I wondered, “Is this an anti-McCain piece? Or, more interestingly, is it a pro-McCain piece that went wrong?” I’m still unsure which it was intended to be, but one thing I am positive about is that it’s so terrible that it is a fascinating piece of rhetorical “craftsmanship” for analysis.

I’m going to make some lists to show why Ms. Steinhauer (whom we will heretofore refer to as Jen) confounded me:

Exhibit A: List of statements that seem “Pro-McCain”
1. But they [McCain’s 7 kids] are largely absent in a primary battle in which families — and all that their presence implies — are central ornaments.
2. Yet unlike the absent children of Rudolph Giuliani, who have strained relations with their father, the McCain children speak with endearment of McCain.
3. As they did in childhood, the McCain children still find one another by their father's side: in rafting boats, on hikes in the Grand Canyon, on mopeds in Bermuda and relaxing in Arizona.
4. For Doug, Andy and Sidney, McCain's oldest daughter, the earliest memories of McCain were his absence. The family lived on modest means in a Navy community in Florida while McCain languished in prison camps in Vietnam.
5. McCain was the sort of father who would not discuss his torture at the hands of Vietnamese captors, who kept his emotions close, and whose second-oldest son saw him emotional only once, when a pet dog died. He was not the father sitting in the front row at back-to-school night, lobbing questions about curriculum, or the presence at the end of the bed after a bad date. But each of his children described him still as the most fun guy in the room.

Exhibit B: List of statements that are Super Confusing and Make No Sense Either Way
1. They have maintained close relations with him in spite of long absences during childhood, a period of intense disappointment — among his older children when McCain remarried — and the breadth of geography and generations.
2. Asked during an interview this fall about his reluctance to bring attention to his expansive brood, the normally loquacious John McCain, who is unabashed on any number of topics, seemed uncomfortable. "It's intentional," he said. "I just feel it's inappropriate for us to mention our children. I don't want people to feel that, it's just, I'd like them to have their own lives. I wouldn't want to seem like I'm trying to gain some kind of advantage. I just feel that it's a private thing."
3. If you wanted face time with Dad, you approached him as he stood over a sizzling grill. ("You can have an audience with him because he doesn't want to leave the meat," Andy said.)
4. On his return, his children found a discipline-minded dad who expected the yard raked, was intolerant of back talk, maintained a constant presence at the Little League games, where the handsome former prisoner of war drew crowds of admirers, or at their beach house, crabbing at low tide. "Dad was the spotter," Andy recalled. "Just don't miss one. You miss a crab and he'd get angry. He was very competitive that way."
5. McCain's job as commanding officer of the Navy Replacement Air Group meant he was home for dinner each night, yet he struggled at times to find his domestic role.
6. When the family went to a wrestling match at the Naval Academy and a group of thuggish kids would not get out of their seats, McCain told them, "You need to get out of those seats or I'll get someone to get you out of them," Andy recalled. "He was just a tough guy. And I remember feeling proud of that.”

Exhibit C: List of statements that seem “Anti-McCain”
1. “But we didn't have a problem knowing who was in charge. If you wanted to deviate from expected policy and he said no, he never felt an obligation to give you a reason."
2. After years of waiting for their family to congeal, the children were devastated when McCain left their mother for another relationship. McCain soon began a new life with Cindy.
3. "It was very, very difficult," said Andy, who — like his siblings — did not attend the wedding, and only met the McCain's second wife years later, in his father's Senate office.
4. The second family, children of privilege who grew up in the quickly developing Southwest, experienced an altogether different paternal presence, the senator-father who arrived on Friday nights from Washington, often to pass the weekends in the family country hideaway, but who was absent from the both the mundane and profound routines of growing up.
5. His relationship with Sidney, 41, is perhaps the most politically interesting. Sidney, a registered Democrat, has worked in the music business for years, and was the child who challenged McCain's authority the most. She continues to debate him on a wide variety of issues.
6. The second chapter of McCain's parenting life found him an established politician who spent most of his time in Washington, leaving his wife and small children for most of the week.

So…it's official: I'm still confused about Jen's point. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Jen intended to write a pro-McCain story—one about how the former POW has managed to “bridge” two families in order to raise his seven children. If that were the case, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the multiple references to McCain being an absent father figure are probably not the best idea. I’d also steer clear of the quotes about the devastation that McCain caused his oldest children when he left their mother for Cindy. And—at least while he’s campaigning for President as a REPUBLICAN—I might leave out the fact that his daughter is a Democrat.

Sigh. Now, if, on the other hand, Jen’s intention was to write an expose about the familial failings of McCain, I would urge her to leave out the cuddly details about Meghan helping her dad to pick out “swank Timberlands” and the multi-family rafting vacations. And, for pete’s sake, what’s up with the slam on the other candidates for whom their “families — and all that their presence implies — are central ornaments?”

As you can see, this is—at best—a conflicted piece of writing. (Sorry, Jen!) We can only hope that Jen was in the process of “opinioning,” a term coined by Neil Postman, meaning that the constant influx of information (in this case, from many of McCain’s offspring) was continually shaping and reshaping her thoughts about McCain. Hmm. Well, I’m going to let Jen off the hook with the ol’ “opinioning” defense, because otherwise, I’d be right—that this is a really terrible article.

Note: On the up side, if anyone’s looking for a job as an editor, I think we know which publication surely needs one. Not mentioning any names...