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Brave New Films has released a new video, "John McCain's Rage," focusing on the Arizona senator's legendary temperament problem. The video features original interviews with POW/MIA advocate Eleanor Apodaca, former Arizona Republic editor and publisher Pat Murphy, former Arizona Republican Party executive director Jon Hinz, and former Arizona senator Dennis DeConcini, all of whom speak from personal experience on John McCain's unstable, violent temper. The video also includes secondary comments by Republican strategist Pat Buchanan and US Army major generals Paul Eaton and Scott Gration, who likewise all express deep misgivings regarding McCain's fitness to serve as president. The webpage for the video contains additional materials including transcript, background information, and links to testimonies and media reports on McCain's temper.
This is not the first time Brave New films has sought to bring McCain's temperament problem into the open. The group recently launched a campaign with The Real McCain to press for for full disclosure of McCain's medical records including psychiatric records, circulating a video and petition which at time of this writing has been signed by more than 59,000 people including nearly 3000 medical doctors. Meanwhile, top Democrats including senators Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Harry Reid of Nevada, and Charles Schumer of New York have recently repeated calls for McCain to fully disclose his medical records (see Huffington Post, ABC News, Columbia Journalism Review, Open Left).
Previous accounts of McCain's infamous anger-management problem include such incidents as when he reacted to disagreement on immigration reform from fellow Republican senator John Cornyn of Texas by screaming, "F*ck you!"; when he called fellow Republican senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico an "a**hole"; and when he called fellow Republican senator Charles Grassley of Iowa a "f*cking jerk." Once in a 1987 meeting at the height of Central American tensions, according to fellow Republican senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, McCain reached across the table and physically assaulted a Nicaraguan representative, seizing him by his shirt collar. "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine...," Cochran later said when endorsing Mitt Romney for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, "...He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."
McCain has also been sharply criticized for his wrathful treatment of POW/MIA family members pressing for information on loved ones who diappeared in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. At a Senate hearing in 1992, McCain verbally assaulted Dolores Alfond, chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen and Women, leaving her in tears. Ms. Alfond - sister of Eleanor Apodaca, whose brother disappeared over North Vietnam in 1967 - is visibly upset in video of the event while McCain sits glowering and ready to explode: hardly the way a public servant ought to behave toward a member of the public he is sworn to serve. Four years later during a Washington conference of Alfond's and Apodaca's group, about 25 members went to a Senate office building hoping to meet with McCain. As McCain and an aide walked by, McCain raised his hand to wave away Jeannette Jenkins, whose cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970, backhanding her and pushing her against a wall. As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor, the wheelchair-bound mother of another missing serviceman, approached the senator. As Gaylor reached out toward McCain, according to Eleanor Apodaca, "McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm ready to strike her, composed himself and pushed the wheelchair away from him" (see McClatchy, Huffington Post, The Nation). Ms. Apodaca recently explained in writing and video why she is "appalled at the possibility that John McCain could become the next President of the United States."
Readers are encouraged to sign the petition for full disclosure of McCain's medical records, to press Democratic leaders including their own senators and representatives to raise the issue on the campaign trail, and even to press McCain himself by e-mail (john_mccain@mccain.senate.gov, info@johnmccain.com).
Mark C. Eades
http://www.mceades.com
