Hilarious Ineptitude

Earlier today I actually read one of the things I linked to in a previous post, and it turned out to be hilarious. It was a Newsweek article in the last post, and it was embedded in the phrase "fucking up an applesauce purchase". Basically it's about the McCain campaign's numerous failed attempts to have even one good media moment, and as far as I could tell, it's not an opinion piece- it's supposed to be pretty straightforward coverage. This part pretty much sums up his entire campaign so far:

Less than an hour after announcing the photo op, the campaign abruptly canceled, citing Hurricane Dolly, which was swirling near the Texas coast. Worse, a runaway barge along the Mississippi River had rammed into a 600-foot oil tanker that morning, leaving a 12-mile-long oil slick that blanketed New Orleans in diesel fumes.

The campaign's big photo op of the week turned out to be a visit to a supermarket in Bethlehem, Pa.—where McCain was photographed in front of a display of processed cheese. As the candidate roamed through the store, his campaign's lanky cameraman knocked over a shelf of Mott's applesauce. The jars skittered across the floor past the senator's feet. When he paused to take questions from reporters, he was briefly drowned out by an announcement on the store's PA system.

Clearly McCain's campaign is being handled by unspeakably cruel Democrats. Consider: Why else would you schedule a major media event on a grotesque eyesore in the middle of the ocean? Especially during a disaster so big that people could literally see it from outer space days beforehand? A runaway barge? Did you have to spray diesel fumes on the Katrina victims? And assuming it was a good idea to make your "big photo op" a trip to the grocery store, couldn't you at least put the candidate in front of the good cheese? And not kick over the damn applesauce? And ask the PA guy to shut up for ten goddamn minutes while the potential next President tries to talk to the three reporters in not even the sixth-biggest city in Pennsylvania?
Amazingly, the rest of the article pretty strongly proves that this is not Democratic sabotage, but the tattered remains of GOP strategy, which could be loosely described as the blind eating the blind. Other quotes from the article:

• "Even Fox News broke away from live coverage of the senator's town-hall meeting to follow the plight of Lil' Smokey, a black bear cub rescued from the California wildfires."
• "McCain has resisted pleas from his aides to cut back on the visually dull town-hall meetings he loves..."
• "His staff can spend weeks organizing an elaborate campaign appearance, only to have McCain ignore his stage directions."
• "McCain aides ordered reporters not to turn to look at the senator as he walked to the microphones, fearing he would catch sight of a familiar face and start talking before he reached the photogenic backdrop."
• "Instead, he has memorized his remarks to make his delivery more natural—and to help him stay "on message." This has been especially difficult for McCain, who continues to riff on any topic that comes to mind..."

McCain's aides are literally pleading with him to just go all the way to the podium and say the stuff he agreed to say, the stuff that is written on a teleprompter he can look at if he just walks all the way over to it. But no, he wants to go to visually dull places and veer off to talk about the North Dakota/Mexico border with a random reporter standing in front of the Hideous Burn Victims for McCain. You deviate from that plan and you get hurricanes, oil spills on poverty victims, and destroying tiny grocery stores where the owners don't even stop working for your visit.
Somehow McCain is still competitive in this race. The best candidate from either party in decades is losing to an irritable doddering old man who can't even live up to to the stupidest campaign tactics in generations. With just a little savvy, or "the combined efforts of every working mind in the GOP", a McCain/Lil' Smokey ticket will trounce Obama come fall.