John McCain says that the press is not giving us an accurate picture of conditions in Iraq. He says that "there are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today."
To prove this, he spent a little time today strolling through an open-air market in Baghdad. And apparently, he's right. It is a safe place to walk, just as long as you're accompanied by a hundred armed soldiers, you have three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships nearby, and you're wearing a bulletproof vest.
Do we think this proves anything? About Iraq, I mean. I know it proves something about John McCain. I guess what it proves about Iraq is that we need to commit to staying there forever and sending enough troops and equipment so that anyone who needs to go buy a basket of strawberries is escorted by a hundred armed soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships. Oh — and they'll need that bulletproof vest, too.
I seem to recall that back in the sixties when John Lindsay was Mayor of New York, he decided to try and dispel the "myth" that a person couldn't walk through Central Park at night without getting mugged. So he took a well-publicized stroll through that piece of real estate one evening, accompanied by about half the city's police force and a hundred reporters and camera crews. Amazingly, no one mugged him.
Less clearly, I remember that reports of crime elsewhere in town took a noticeable upswing that evening…which makes sense since all the cops were in the park, making sure no one tried to grab His Honor's billfold. It was also pointed out that the Honorable Mayor Lindsay was something like 6'4" tall and in great physical shape. Even had he been alone, he was not exactly most criminals' first choice when it comes to picking victims.
This was not the main reason that Lindsay's popularity in New York fell to what we now and forever will think of as George W. Bush levels, but it was a factor. Bet John McCain's little charade lowers his esteem a tad…though maybe not with the crowd he now seems to be trying desperately to win over.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are both off this week, which is a shame. What either of them could do with that news footage.