John McCain calls kid 'little jerk' on campaign trail

Senator John McCain greeted a lot of friendly faces when his campaign rolled through Conchord, New Hampshire on Tuesday, but one resident wouldn't let him off so easily.

During a question and answer session, McCain jokingly called a high school student a "little jerk" after the young man questioned the Arizona legislator about his age.

"If elected, you'd be older than Ronald Reagan, making you the oldest president," the student said. "Do you ever worry that you might die in office or get Alzheimer’s or some other disease that might affect your judgment?"

"Every campaign I've ever been on in my entire life, I've outcampaigned all of my opponents," responded McCain. "And I'm confident that I will. Thanks for the question, you little jerk."

http://rawstory.com//news/2007/John_McCain_calls_kid_little_jerk_0904.html

To say the least, the remark does not translate well in print. Sheesh....who is the jerk now?

within him. Maybe not without reason, but still. Sheesh, if he can't handle a question like that from a kid without insulting him, I don't think I want him talking to the North Koreans...


www.scarebaby.com

he seems ancient to these young people.

It's lost about 100 so far.

Make that 101 now............

And the copyright on the road atlas says "1850."

I bet his PR guys wanted to bitch-slap him.

But I thought it was kind of funny, and I don't think the young man who posed the question was insulted. I don't hold any brief for McCain, but my take on the "little jerk" comment was that it was a W.C. Fields-style "go away boy, you bother me" kind of thing. I thought it made McCain look like an actual human being rather than a pre-programmed automaton, like some candidates.

nt

in Fantasyland! Losing the 2000 nomination to * is a pretty embarassing defeat I'd say. Good luck on the primaries. I'm sure you'll do quite well

(pause)

NOT

or maybe it's just the Alzheimer's kicking in.

...singing "Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran."

Not.

might -- or would definitely -- put people in his Cabinet who would think that his bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran joke/song was funny, and that real human beings wouldn't be destroyed.

That's what we have now, with the Bush Cabinet, and it definitely hasn't worked out.

better a little jerk than a big old fart

The kid wasn't asking about how well you run campaigns Mccain.

What a horrible, disrespectful question.

"Earlier, at Concord High School, Mr. McCain faced some tough questioning from the students. One noted that Mr. McCain, who is 71, would be the oldest president elected to a first term if he won, and asked him if he worried that he might die in office, or get Alzheimer’s disease, or something else that could affect his judgment."

We recently had a fucking president who was all Alzheimered out -- ronny ray-gun -- and he FUCKED UP THE COUNTRY!!!!!!

That's a damn important question...

Especially since that asswipe mccain already shows signs of dementia... As my Oncology Nurse girlfriend says, "he exhibits all the signs of chemo brain"

Feel sorry for him if you must but you SURE AS HELL don't want HIM anywhere NEAR the White House and the BIG BUTTON!!!

Is McCain's age an issue? Sure. Was the question disrespectful and poorly worded? Yes.

More important is the question;

Do you think he should have been prevented from asking it?

Perhaps you should re-read my post. Nobody should be prevented from asking relevant questions; my qualm is with the questioner's utter lack of respect and manners in asking it.

Like the other poster said, we already went down this road with Ronnie suffering Alzheimer's, taking naps and wetting himself during cabinet meetings.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/us/politics/05mccain.html?ref=politics

well I don't know what I'd do.
But I sure know what I would like to do.

That's my Senator

Respect is a two-way street.

Just sayin' :eyes:

starving and dehydrated and gasping for breath.

Lo how the buzzards do circle overhead.

Ok, the kid is impertinent in the question itself, which is not utterly shocking, is it? High schoolers are nothing if not occasionally impertinent.

McCain had a chance to make the kid a serious entity. Might he not have asked this kid his name, and when told, addressed him by his name, not for public relations purposes alone but because this kid is someone's son, someone's brother, grandson, nephew, neighbor, classmate.

And then might McCain not have said,

"Age happens. But age is less the point than experience. I've been a fortunate man to have lived through many different kinds of experiences -- just as you have. The number of years doesn't matter. It's the experiences we fill those years with that makes us who we are. You have the temerity to ask me a question and I have the privilege of answering you in a forum of your classmates and teachers. What we do is important, and you and I can prove that by a respectful exchange of ideas, just the two of us, or all of us here together, and finally, all of us in the country. Madison and Jefferson would have wanted us to do this. And we can do it if we're 17 or 117. It's the experience that matters. Thank you for your insight and question, because it's an essential part of the democratic process."

I think he would have won a few votes on the faculty that way, maybe several of the kids, and nobody would had to have had the word "jerk" repeated for days afterward in front of every locker in the damn school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2zx3-0zOPs

Amazing how a bunch of kids can distinguish between a mean spirited insult and an attempt at humor, while supposedly sophisticated political commenters can't.

talk to ANYBODY? I like good jokes and pranks too, but I don't think I'd even have said that to one of MY kids, let alone someone elses. IMO, it was a very dumb word for a politician to use toward anyone.

to just go away.......

I thank the man for his service to our country -- even as I lead him off-stage and into oblivion.

Barring an absolutely miraculous risen-from-the-grave comeback, I think McCain is on his last gulp of beer.

I learned early on that demeaning and insulting someone is NOT funny.

You may get a cheap laugh at the target's expense but you lower yourself in the eyes of everyone - and rightly so.

here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x51938#51960

Dog, and I traded Boxer for this assclown...

And even DiFi is marginally better than Kyl...

Ah, well, at least I'm finally thawing out...

It can be debated regarding appropriateness, but it was a fucking joke. Come on, focus on the issues! Not on a 70 year olds attempt at humor.

Nope, it was further proof that mccain is demented...




On Edit: I CAN'T BELIEVE that that FUCK mccain is being defended on DU!!!!!!!!

from Free Republic.

John McCain made a joke. Even the "little jerk" allegedly came away impressed with him, as scary as that might seem.

At least we can be honest: it was a joke and a pretty well received one. Watch the video. The whole thing was rather self deprecating.

There are SO many things to rip McCain on, this REALLY isn't one of them.

I described it as self-deprecating in the GD thread on the topic, and got wikipedia definitions thrown at me until I almost thought that I, a Canadian, and thus a master of the self-deprecating genre of humour, had lost my mind somewhere.

ProudDad, my dear friend: nobody's "defending" McCain -- in this instance because there's nothing to defend him against!

(That's different from my take on what Whoopi Goldberg said: that she wasn't "defending" Michael Vick, she was just stating some facts.)

McCain calls his best friends and total strangers "you little jerk", often in a fake-gruff way. As I noted below, I wouldn't be surprised if in his early life he had used a less publicly acceptable term of endearment ... you old _____ ...
(I can think of one or two things to fill in the blank with,
http://www.google.ca/search?num=30&hl=en&safe=off&q=%22you+old+son+of+a+bitch%22
being one of the milder ones)
and consciously switched himself to a one-size-fits-all standard alternative.

But yes, in the exchange in question, he was sarcastically thanking the student for bringing his age to his attention, and poking fun at himself as he'd done in the first part of his answer.

Not many people are evil 24/7. ;)

People can throw as many definitions at you as they want. Taking the single line "you little jerk" on its own would be taking it out of context, and that would be a tad disingenuous.

McCain made fun of himself in his answer, mentioning what his kids tell him about the Easter Eggs.

Context and tone are everything.

It was self-deprecating.

Boy, I just defended John McCain. I'd better go lie down in a dark room.

Score one for McCain.

He handled it with good humor and the "little jerk" was a good tag line. The kid didn't ask him if he was too old to be president. He asked him if he wasn't going to die in office. Before the "thanks, ya little jerk" line he gave a polite and thoughtful answer.

I'll never vote for McCain, but he did handle this question well. And he remains the best of a damn sorry lot of Republican knobjobbers.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1730342&mesg_id=1731552

and discovered that "you little jerk" is the term of endearment that McCain uses to address just about anybody he's kidding around with. Not really like Bush's practice of applying stupid nicknames to people, it's just an all-purpose jocular form of address / reference to someone.

One suspects that given his generation, it may be something he consciously adopted to replace an, er, coarser term of endearment of some sort, and kind of lumbered himself with as a bit of a verbal tic.

Here, I'll just reproduce what I came up with ...


I thought I'd see whether this exchange had made it to youtube. I searched the site for

McCain jerk

and this is what I got, from 3 months ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkeNWqOLTjk
McCain greets a journalist who is off camera and says (as best I can tell), while shaking his hand and smiling:
"Good t'see ya showed up ya li'l jerk, I didn't see ya in Iowa."


Now, here's one that seems to be in reference to someone else:

http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/05/so_thats_where_.html
Thursday, 17 May 2007
So THAT'S where 'that little jerk' was...
When John McCain was peering into the lights looking for "that little jerk" Lindsey Graham, his friend and ally was still on the way back from Washington.


I'm not familiar with the cast of characters myself, but here's some more:

http://jakers.wordpress.com/2007/05/18/was-john-mccain-wearing-flip-flops-or-crocs
“That little jerk, Lindsey Graham…”–John McCain referring to the Robin to his Batman at the afterparty after the May 16, 2007 debate held in Columbia, South Carolina.


And from even longer ago:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19085-2004May11.html
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page C01
John McCain drives like he lives: with conviction, impatience and a willingness to cross dividing lines.
"JOHN, A TRUCK!" an aide yells from the back seat.
"I see it, I see it," says McCain, veering right, just missing the truck.
"Joe, you're a little jerk," McCain tells the aide. He means this lovingly.


But wait, there's more!

http://greenmountainpolitics1.blogspot.com/2007/03/on-bus.html
We know a grand entrance when we see it and so we said, "Actually Senator we're from GreenMountainPolitics1, which is a New Hampshire Primary Blog."
The good Senator, without missing a beat, stuck out his hand and growled in a most good natured way, "Oh yeah, how did you get on here you little jerk?"
And GreenMountainPolitics1, without missing a beat, growled right back, "Diaz let us on!" and shook the Senator's hand.



It's a term of endearment, about which no one who has ever been the butt of it ever seems to have pitched a fit. And there's the proof. Not that I needed any. I thought it was plain from the starting gate, and equally plain that very many of the people all over the internet and media pitching a fit about the incident in question are witless ... as in too dim to get it, or to disingenuous to acknowledge it.

The great wonkette acknowledges the joke, but strives to be in the witless category anyhow:

http://wonkette.com/politics/how-to-make-friends-and-influence-people-dept%5C'/john-mccain-old-and-in-the-way-296233.php
forget the Youtubes and the Myspaces, the best way to alienate teens is right to their adorable, shiny faces!


The Boston Globe is made of, er, sterner stuff:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2007/09/mccain_addresse.html
McCain addresses age issue with humor
Talk about not respecting your elders. ...


Gee; yeah, eh? The high school kid calls McCain a senile old goat, McCain jokes it off. Nobody involved seems to have been damaged.