I honestly wasn't planning on blogging about McCain's latest failed attempt at humor. The way I figured it, people who don't like McCain aren't going to like what he said, and people who do aren't going to understand what all of the fuss is about. But Matt Yglesias's response is so good that I've changed my mind:
When you look at something like the AP's covering for John McCain as he embarrassingly jokes about his desire to kill Iranian civilians, it's worth considering how the AP would have reported this if the shoe were on the other foot. Ahmadenijad makes a "joke," at a political rally, about killing Americans. Soft-focus human interest story? I doubt it. Heck, what would John McCain's reaction be if that happened?
This is precisely the point that needs to be made here. Many on the right seem to have an endless ability to hyperventilate whenever someone in the Middle East screams "Death to America," even in situations where it isn't entirely clear that the screamers mean to do anything more than scream. "We must take their threats seriously," they tell us. "Remember how we ignored Hilter?"
Meanwhile, McCain makes a joke about average Iranian citizens dying and the very same people tell us that we are all just supposed to laugh it off. "That's politics," they say. "Lighten up!"
And then, without missing a beat, they return to breathlessness over Iran's long-range missile test, ignoring entirely how all of this is connected. Because, of course, building and testing long-range missiles is an entirely rational thing for Iran to do when one of the two candidates for president of the world's only superpower thinks it is amusing to joke about dead Iranian civilians.
Like Matt says, just imagine what the reaction would be if Ahmadenijad made a similar joke. No less than Sen. McCain himself would tell us how horrible it was, and how it should make clear to everyone just how serious a threat Iran is. But not so in the reverse. In the reverse it is merely a harmless joke that should be laughed off.
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