The New Republic vs. Adoption
John McCain's Adopted Daughter is just too much for the pro-abortion left
By Ben Domenech Posted in 2008 | John McCain | TNR — Comments (34) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
For some people, especially those who live and work in the District of Columbia, there is no aspect of life untouched by politics. It surrounds them like a cloud. This leads some of them to constant overanalysis of life, pop culture, and even shopping trends through the harsh lens of partisan politics. They tend to be the same people attracted to the constant unrelenting snark that the internet thrives on, and — if you said it to the subject’s face — is the sort of thing that in the old days would end with pistols and paces (as it should be, Thomas yells somewhere).
I have no idea if Dana Goldstein of The American Prospect is one of these people. But her latest written work of political analysis over at TNR just goes so far over the edge of any guidelines of respect or decorum, it exemplifies what happens when partisan political views warp the prism through which one views the world.
Namely, "Baby on Board" accuses the McCain campaign of “using [his adopted daughter] Bridget as a political football” thanks to a mailer depicting Cindy McCain with baby Bridget in her arms, standing beside a beaming Bangladeshi nun.
Read on.
The text of the mailer reads in part:
"Cindy cradles little Bridget, a baby she and John adopted in 1993 from Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh. Bridget has been a great blessing to the McCain family. Today, Cindy and John work together to promote adoption and to help women facing crisis pregnancies."
In these three small sentences, Goldstein finds “code words” and “symbols” of the “religious right” and “anti-choice activism.” She goes on to take several shots at Mother Theresa, and to actually suggest that the Catholic Church and pro-lifers as a whole are blissfully unaware of all of the difficulties associated with adoption. She suggests this is all an effort at playing race-based guilt politics (I’d suggest she take a look at what happened in New Hampshire on the other side of the aisle if she wants to see racial politics at its worst). And she finishes up with the idea that promoting adoption of children born in the Third World, in worlds of terrible poverty, and (in Bridget’s case) with physical disfigurement that makes one an outcast, as "the ugliest rhetorical practices of the pro-life movement."
McCain has seven children in all, including an older daughter, Meghan, who is rather prominent. But Bridget’s interactions with the press have been careful and limited, sensitive to her. In this campaign as in others, she hasn’t been paraded about or held up as a totem. And if talking to the kids at such a prominent place as Scholastic makes one a political football, well…but let’s leave that accusation to the dustbin it deserves.
In truth, it’s not worth raising a response to the political hackery of Dana Goldstein, whose pro-abortion views clearly tint her view of the world. The response is Bridget McCain herself, who today is safe, and healthy, and loved by a family, because a woman was brave enough not to merely react with hands-off sympathy, but to gather this frail infant up in her arms and never let her go. I can venture this much: Politics was the farthest thing from her mind at the moment she held this ten week old child in her arms.
Cindy took one look in Bridget's beautiful eyes and said, "That's my baby, if I leave her here she'll die." I don't think Cindy ever put her down.
My little sister Florence is a few years younger than Bridget. She is thirteen, and she is adopted from DC social services—not exactly as daunting a task as the McCain’s faced in their long struggle with the Bangladeshi adoption services, but still, it took long days of expense and effort.
A few months ago, she got into a conversation about abortion, of all things, with her friends at ballet practice. It's the sort of thing 12 and 13 year old girls talk about all the time these days.
Florence, without any prompting whatsoever - and never having had a conversation about the issue with my parents, siblings, or me - listened to her friends for a while. And then she interrupted:
"So let me get this straight: you all think someone should be able to make someone like me not exist?"
I love my little sister. I love her not as a “political football,” as a “code word,” as a “rhetorical practice.” I love her because of the girl she is, and the woman she will be. And every day, Florence reminds me that we are loved not because of where we were born, because of who raised us, or because of how we grew up—and that there exists within each of us a spark of the divine, worthy of dignity and meant to be cherished as a gift.
In the real world, not everything in life is political. Dana Goldstein should try visiting it sometime.
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The New Republic vs. Adoption 34 Comments (0 topical, 34 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Whatever my opinion of Sen. McCains politics are his family are great people. I have met many of them on several different occasions and they are just nice people.
On a side note, I thought that the kids were never supposed to be spoken about in the news or by pundits, just look at Chelsea and all her positioning my mom & dad.
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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
--Aristotle
Thank you for this, Ben.
Too bad that hacks like Goldstein fail to have the perspective and wisdom of your 13-year old sister.
1. McCain
2. Thompson
3. Giuliani
Seriously, I was moved.
"I believe in grace, because I have seen it. In peace, because I have felt it. In forgiveness, because I needed it."
-George W. Bush
CLEARLY the whole "crisis pregnancies" line was meant to be a codeword for an anti-choice viewpoint. People who doubt that are mad. It's obvious.
But, for God's sake, who cares? It's a Republican primary. Republicans are against abortion and for the alternatives.
I have my own views about how reality plays out in the abortion debate, but McCain's family is a living emblem of an alternative to abortion. His family is a testament to acceptance and love. For a lefty to get upset about him pushing adoption as an alternative to abortion, in a Republican primary, is ridiculous and counterproductive.
Frankly, as a Democrat, I wish adoption agencies got more love -- and women who got abortions less "zero-sum" hate -- from the Republican party. So McCain's mailer seems dead on to me.
While Dana Goldstein is nuts, the ad is an example of focusing on other than McCain's positions on the issues and his record on the issues. This cult of personality is getting a bit old.
You say she is nuts and yet you make the exact same accusation in very slightly softer tones.
absentee
thank you Ben. and thank you to the McCains and the Domeneches and every other family that provides such an example of love and grace.
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
Not a McCain backer in this election but geez louise.
I'm one of ten myself and have over 100 cousins and second cousins on my mom's side alone. The vast majority were adopted and considered "special needs." I wouldn't give up a single one of them.
Life is a blessing. And not just to the one living it.
--Nick
www.RightMichigan.com
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"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison
....tolerance and respect for all, and programs to help the "less fortunate" throughout the world, but as we see here, when it comes down to it, all of that rhetoric is predicated on their ability -- and preference -- to simply despising those poor and indigent (whom they dedicate so much lip service to helping) from afar.
The Left's foremost tactic -- unconscious but all-pervasive -- remains projection. All of the worst things that they accuse their opponents across the aisle (us) of, which we would, of course, never even dream of thinking, are, quite simply, to be found hidden deep within their hearts and souls, and among their deepest, darkest feelings and desires.
This has a great deal to do with why the Left wishes to legislate thought, word, and action so completely. The risk, in absence of such legislation, is not that the rest of us will cross some visible or invisible line with our words or actions; the risk, though they only know it subconsciously, is that they will do so, and they push so hard for all-encompassing regulations on humanity and human thought and emotion because they project onto the rest of the world all that is worst within themselves, and see, in looking at their fellow man, only the danger of more people acting as they wish they could, rather than any inherent or overarching goodness within.
This is, perhaps more than anything, a symptom of the Left's wholesale rejection of God and of religion. Rejecting a higher power rids people of any effective means of dealing with their own inner demons, be they thoughts, desires, or expectations.
Further, if there is no higher power or higher authority, and fundamentally flawed Man is all that there is, then what governor can there be on the deepest, darkest demons living within men's hearts? Simply put, none but those laws which are enacted by men, which is why there is such a divisive movement afoot among the Left to, contradictorily, (a) oppose any legislation of "morality" or ethics whatsoever, while simultaneously (b) fighting tooth and nail to legislate the thoughts and actions of the rest of humanity, since what they see in others is naught but the predilection to carry out the worst of the dark desires and thoughts that they harbor deep within, and for which they most despise themselves.
First, isn't TNR supposed to be a center-left paper not an Angry Left paper? Is this the same group that Kos got into a big fight with when he was pulling the party to the far left How'd they go from that to calling the mainstream, down-the-middle position (legal in rape, incest, and life of the mother; illegal in cases of convenience) on abortion extreme? This is unfortunate because TNR is generally a good resource for responsible, left of center ideas and politics.
Second, pro-lifers should take a note on how one can run on a long pro-life record and still win some pro-choice votes. This mailer is obviously a reminder of McCain's pro-life record and it does relate the adoption of his child to those principles and values. Like Mother Teresa, the McCains value the life of individual children and they are willing to shoulder some burden to embody those values. Like many, I wish we had more families like the McCains.
But the mailer is also a good example of a less divisive way of showing one's pro-life values. Although the author talks about it derisively, the link between adoption and abortion is important. And the massive amount of work the Catholic Church does in adoption as an answer to abortion is emblematic of this.
Unfortunately, this author has bought into the idea that pro-lifers are primarily a political group. If you understand that most pro-lifers follow an ethic that values each individual human being, you see what the McCains did as beautiful and almost expected. As Ben notes, if you see everything as political, then the adoption is a crass example of the depths a politician will go to. To normal people, the latter is just silly.
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I counted 5 (go figure) conspicuous occurrences of the number 5 in this comment stream. One of them was 'squared'. What on earth does it mean?
C'mon, fellas -- I gotta know.
OK, thanks. Only explanations I could think of were a) the given name of one of Charlie Brown's pals in the Peanuts comic strip, and b) the verbal command that makes the toaster pop up in the series Green Acres. Neither seemed to make sense.
PS: I liked the original post as well.
Taniwha
"[sniff, sniff] Somebody's toast is burning! 5!!!" -Eb
How low can the pro-aborts get? Everyone is a target, even Mother Theresa. Please click through and read the Goldstein piece.
What that foolish writer doesn't even seem to know or at least admit knowing, is the other reason why McCain put out this flier. He's been very carful about bringing his children into the spotlight. He never talks about the fact that he has two children in the armed forces - one actually serving in Iraq right now - though for sure he could get points for that. But in the last cycle in SC, there was a whisper campaign that Bridget was McCain's love-child by a black mother - by explaining her story he puts that old tale to bed just in case anybody still thinks it as well as making his pro-life point. McCain is someone who walks the walk rather than just talks the talk - that's what us McCaniacs love about him.
John S. McCain III
We've come a long, long way together/Through the hard times and the good
I have to celebrate you, baby/I have to praise you like I should
Small note: Rudy gained some support on the right because he had the right enemies. As McCain succeeds, I expect more screeds from the left because they are worried that what they think should be a landslide D election cycle could be thwarted. It will be interesting to see if making the right enemies will help McCain win back some conservative support.
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Pro-choicers do not like adoption; it undercuts their argument.
Sorry;
If McCain brings his children into the process it is he who has stepped over the line. He is playing politics and probably expected some overaught liberal or conservative to draw something from it.
That's like saying that, because your pastor uses examples from his own family to make a point, he's "playing religion" with his family. I didn't see any inappropriate usage of his family in the mailer unlike a certain couple from Hope.
That charge was answered above. If someone brings attacks against him in a whisper campaign, he has every right to respond.
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Considering where the good doctor's head was, when practicing medicine, is it any wonder that the man has issues?
My daughter was adopted from Russia. I was born with severe, life-threatening birth defects. Both of us would have ended up in an abortion mill Cuisanart had the pro-choice %@^@#-heads had their way.
So you wanted me to die, did you? So you wanted my little girl to be pureed, did you? @$#%^%^ you.
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I've always heard the NARAL hags croon that no one who wasn't willing to adopt an unwanted baby was really pro life. I guess this puts that canard to lie.
"If this ain't a mess, it'll do until one shows up." -Sheriff Bell, No Country For Old Men
NARAL hates adoption; it undermines their point.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill