George Graham

Time to Fade Away

U.S. Sen. McCain Discusses Proposal For Enhanced Rescission Line-Item Veto Authoritynewt

Are you surprised to see John McCain (top photo) on TV? How about Newt Gingrich (bottom photo)? I am surprised. And discouraged. They are like a bad cold that just seems to hang on forever. Surely these old war horses have had their day and it’s time for them to fade away?

I suppose the 24-hour cable channels have a hard time finding recognizable faces to fill their endless cycle of “news.” But there must be “experts” out there who haven’t worn out their welcome in our living rooms.

What could McCain say now that we haven’t heard many times over? Surely everyone knows he wants to bomb, bomb, bomb any and everybody. He is the voice of endless war, the advocate of perpetual bloodshed. I think he is mentailly unbalanced, but that’s just me. The cable TV producers obviously think he is some kind of sage.

I won’t go into McCain’s checkered past. He is widely hailed as a war hero, but there’s another, darker side to his life that doesn’t get much attention.

Gingrich is another tainted blast from the past that continues to haunt our TV screens. What could he possibly have to say now? Hasn’t he been discredited over and over and over?

Yet he remains a sought-after source of wisdom on the issues of the day. On Tuesday, for example, he made a speech on housing before the Bipartisan Policy Center. The Huffington Post’s Zach Carter observes that it “epitomizes the soft corruption of Washington elites at their worst. ”

Everyone who has been listening for the past two or three decades must know that Gingrich is in the business of lining his own pockets and has no concern for the nation’s welfare. He and his associates churn out an endless stream of newsletters, books, tapes – even children’s books – to mine the vast credulity of American “conservatives.”

The Huffington Post piece recalls that while Gingrich was in Congress, he was a diehard defender of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, organizations that played a key role in creating the housing bubble that triggered America’s worst recession in more than half a century.  And when he was ousted from his lofty Congressional perch, he raked in more than $1.6 million as a consultant for Freddie Mac.

Yet on Tuesday, this same Newt Gingrich lectured policy makers on the dangers of too-big-to-fail institutions backed by government guarantees.

In this age of non-stop newscasts, Americans are exposed to all kinds of bogus “experts” – think-tank hacks and PR flacks who are paid to create and spread propaganda, for example. But I don’t think any of these media parasites are as annoying as the worn-out fogeys the cable channels dredge up. Fogeys like McCain and Gingrich, for example.

Click for the Huffington Post story.

Click for McCain’s shady past.

Behind the scenes with Gingrich.

About the author

gwgraeme

I am a Jamaican-born writer who has lived and worked in Canada and the United States. I live in Lakeland, Florida with my wife, Sandra, our three cats and two dogs. I like to play golf and enjoy our garden, even though it's a lot of work. Since retiring from newspaper reporting I've written a few books. I also write a monthly column for Jamaicans.com