Everybody’s Hero
So, a guy goes off to war, becomes a genuine war hero. Is held for years by the enemy, during which time his adoring wife, while waiting for his return, gets into a Christmas Eve car accident which leaves her permanently disfigured. He comes home and tries to make it work, but the people have changed.
He wants to live a little after all he’s been through. She’s just happy to be alive after all she’s been through, and glad that he’s alive and home. But they can’t put the pieces back together again, much as they both might have wished they could. He goes off and has a little fun, eventually marrying someone else.
And the woman who waited for him, the one he originally married, says she’s grateful for his generosity, as he has agreed to pay her medical bills for life and, even now, at the age of 70, says she still adores him and will vote for him to be the next President of the United States.
Is this so wrong?
No, it’s not wrong. Sometimes things/people change and it is best for all involved to go their own way. It doesn’t mean you can’t be nice to one another or honor a commitment once given.
June 10th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
While admirable that she is so loyal, the situation is very unsettling, but I don’t want to go by hearsay in judging it. Besides, even if her appearance was the reason he left her, would we be right in expecting a marriage where both parties aren’t happy to last forever? I know, that might sound like the resigned attitude Carol has taken, but you can’t make things last where the desire has faded and expect for both people to be happy. Carol’s a wise and decent lady, and I wonder if McCain remarried up or down. Cindy would have to be an amazing woman to fill Carol’s shoes.
June 10th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Interesting… I haven’t seen any similar stories in the American papers. Not recently anyway.
Hard to pass judgment on this one.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
He sure is a fan of women. NOT
June 10th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
What is so wrong about it?
If the situation did not work out because of certain circumstances and they agreed that things wouldn’t last….then it’s completely reasonable and fine. Leave it at that and nobody gets hurt and DON’T LOOK BACK.
Now as for him paying off her medical bills for life?
If Cindy doesn’t mind and if its not some kind of insult to her or her family, then it’s all ok.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
McCain is a creep, and it really shows you what sort of a woman Cindy is underneath that quiet exterior, Carol must really love the guy if she has to make excuses for him….I can’t see why. McShame just isn’t a man of good character at all~scary even!!!
June 10th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
There is a lot wrong
Carol McCain waited for the return of her husband from his Vietnamese captivity for five and a half long years; as McCain idolator David Grann put it in the New Republic, she was “a kind of modern-day Penelope to McCain’s Odysseus.” She carried her burden with nobility, and resolve, staying faithful to the man she refused to believe she had lost – even in the face of her own tragedy. It was Christmas Eve, 1969, while driving along a snowbound street, that she went crashing into a telephone pole: the impact hurled her through the windshield. She lost her left leg, ruptured her spleen, and went through a long series of agonizingly painful operations. Before the accident, she had been a statuesque beauty who worked as a model; she came out of it with four inches subtracted from her height, broken in body – but not in spirit. Herlove for her war hero husband forbade her from letting him know anything of her condition: he knew nothing of the accident, and she refused to write him about it since it would only make his burden heavier.
THE RETURN OF THE INGRATE
Any man would be lucky to have such a fierce, unbending love: she stuck by him, agitating for his release, and living for the day of his return. Her devotion was repaid with rejection. He learned of her accident on the plane home, and wasted no time in getting rid of her. He was soon back to his old tricks of playing the field – “just as he had at the Naval Academy,” says Grann – and soon sought a divorce. He openly acknowledges that his behavior was solely responsible for the break-up of his marriage, and seems to glory in the macho role while simultaneously professing at least some sense of remorse: “I think she has reason to be bitter,” McCain told one interviewer.
AN ALBATROSS
As for Carol, she avers that “the breakup of our marriage was not caused by my accident or Vietnam or any of those things. I don’t know that it might not have happened if John had never been gone. I attribute it more to John turning forty and wanting to be twenty-five again than I do to anything else.” This doesn’t sound like bitterness; it is more like benevolence, in that it gives her ex-husband the benefit of a doubt and seems to excuse his disloyalty as practically hormonal, or at least fated. A less charitable – and more realistic – appraisal of McCain’s motives is that he might have found his physically-impaired spouse more of an albatross than an asset for a man intent on a political career.
THE OPPORTUNIST
Moreover, his choice of a new wife was not exactly inconvenient. As the Phoenix New Times put the question:
“Would United States Senator John McCain be a presidential contender if it weren’t for his marriage to Cindy Hensley McCain, heiress to the Hensley liquor fortune? It’s doubtful. The senator’s wife and – more important – his father-in-law, James Willis Hensley, are very wealthy people.”
As a career military man, from a military family, his pay peaked at around $45,000. After retiring in 1980, however, and getting rid of Carol, he swept Cindy Lou Hensley off her feet and moved to Arizona, her home state, “to plunge into the world of politics.” While working for his father-in-law, he “was promoting himself as much as he was Budweiser beer. A better job description might have been ‘candidate.’” This opportunist on the make was no wild man, sowing his wild oats, but rather a man with a mission, a ruthless man who knew what he wanted – and got it.
The New Times put it well: “From Day 1, Hensley money has enabled McCain to be a full-time politician, free from financial concerns.” From Day 1 of this campaign, John McCain has posed as a man of character: his supporters have even gone so far as to characterize him as “the Anti-Clinton.” This is a lie, and not a white one either. It is the exact opposite of the truth, as his personal history – specifically the way he discarded his first wife like a used-up dish-rag – makes plain as day.
“DIRTY” CAMPAIGNING Is this “dirty campaigning”? What nonsense! If a man is going to pose as a Hero, a moral exemplar to youth, and a shining knight in armor come to rescue a decadent nation, then he had better measure up to his own standards – or else get out of politics. As the latter is not likely to happen – at least, not voluntarily – those who know the truth about McCain and understand its ominous implications must work to bring this awareness to the general public. If the Bush campaign is “above the battle,” then the battle must be fought without them and in spite of them – because the stakes are too high to entrust the outcome to a bunch of wimps.
The media screams about every exposure of McCain’s record as a “smear”and “negative campaigning,” and cheerswhile McCain calls into question the right of his conservative opponents to speak out. Let them howl. The campaign to expose the dark side of John McCain must and will continue: they are howling with pain because it is effective.
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June 10th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
You drive an old Chevy Impala for years. She piles on the miles but she still gets you where you need to go. You have to start adding a quart of oil every once in a while. You drive her down the highway and she starts to always pull to the right. The paint starts to peel and a few rusty spots appear. The headliner sags down and tickles the top of your head as you drive.
Then, one day you’re driving by the Chevrolet dealership and out front is a brand new Corvette ……
Bye, bye Impala.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Ohhh what a common political fairytale of love.
Ok nobody cares, let’s move on and drink some Hensley!
June 10th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
i emailed out to others should know his charater
June 10th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
just watch Cindy and when they are together he ignores her and she always walks behind him never shakes hands and like she is barbie
June 10th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Nothing wrong, stuff happen. If we knew every little tiny detail about either presidential candidate lives would we really want to vote for either one of them?
June 10th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Cindy looks like the Crypt Keeper. Yeah that’s right. I said it…
June 11th, 2008 at 12:18 am
Cindy McCain is beautiful. This lady had a stroke and you’d let someone call her names? That’s out of bounds even for Liberalland. John McCain makes a video about “Hating War” and I think he’s forever fighting one. That’s just not right.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:20 am
no it isn’t…
June 11th, 2008 at 10:19 am
not her i problem is Mccain and how he treats a woman and moral values watch him when he is out with Cindy he pays no attention to her and she walks behind her like he is using her as a barbie for show
June 11th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Maybe he just realized she looks like the cryptkeeper and is embarrassed to hold her hand while walking…so now she just walks behind him…
just kidding.
I think McCain is wrong on alot of things. If I thought he was wrong on the economy and the war…AND NOW THIS! And he treats his wife like sh!t, calls her a cunt and calls us little jerks, then he
he is wrong to be….to be….president!!!
We better watch out for John McCain.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
McCain is a dispicable person and I hope that every newspaper in America picks this article up. This better be the first story on Hannity and Colmes tonight.
June 12th, 2008 at 5:56 pm