Jesus H. F-ing Christ, we get it already

So, like, was John McCain a POW or something?

Via Andrew Sullivan's Face of the Day, here's TV celebrity Fred Thompson speaking in front of a gigantic, and gigantically creepy image of a wounded John McCain.

Enough already. Is that all you've got? For the 1000th and last time, thank you, John Fucking McCain. Thank you so fucking much for going to Annapolis (where I believe you finished 3rd from the bottom . . . can you say legacy?) and then going to Vietnam and then crashing several planes and getting taken prisoner around the time that I was born. I cannot thank you enough, but please STFU and do not become President, you batshit crazy freak.

In the 70s, "Vietnam" was so powerfully laden with sensitivity. As soon as I was aware of the world I knew it was something that had freaked out the entire country. As a result I grew up with a profound respect - reverence? - for the veterans who served there. What on Earth had they been through? How could people treat them poorly when they returned home? Granted, watching Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, and the PBS documentary based on Stanley Karnow's book on consecutive Thursday nights does not equal one one-billionth of what guys born 15-20 years before me (those who went or ended up there - not chickenhawks like Dubya, Cheney, etc, etc) went through, but those films, along with a high school/college historian's interest in that time and that war and a sponge-like absorption of the post-Vietnam zeitgeist, certainly let me know that it was one fucked-up experience. Once again, J Mac, STFU about it. May I say that I think you diminish your experience and all of your fellow veterans' collective experience when you use your time in Vietnam as a Karl Rovian dogwhistle character trait on par with Dubya's bullshit Texas Toughguy persona.

I just have one more question (for now). As DailyKos diarist Chumley
asks, "Why is McCain a delicate flower who needs constant ass kissing?"

God in heaven, is there any man in America who has been given MORE respect and deference for his military service than John McCain?

Seriously! Someone, (don't know who--please advise if you know) said something to the effect that McCain served his country with utmost bravery while a POW, then spent every year since then being a complete asshole. So true.

[Photo by Paul J. Richards/Getty]