Polyhedral Die You Can Believe In

Recently there's been some talk about whether McCain is taking bits and pieces of his speeches from other sources. I doubt much will come of this, since there was similar talk about Obama earlier this year and that has all died down. Plagiarism doesn't really have legs as a story, and I think the reason is that people care more about what the candidate says than where he got the words. Otherwise, they'd be criticized for having paid speechwriters and not doing all the work themselves, right? On the other hand, the most recent example is about a story McCain tells about his time in captivity. This goes to the heart of his personal narrative, the way the public perceives him, etc, etc. If McCain did not really share a special moment with a covert Christian in that Vietnamese POW camp, that would be like discovering Obama's white grandmother was actually the picture of a perfectly tolerant, color blind, civil rights activist, rather than a woman with some occasional moments of prejudice that taught the future Senator that even if you don't like everything about a person, there are some people you just can't disown.

All that aside, what really caught my eye was this bit from the McCain campaign's response:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

To be clear, whoever wrote this blurb on McCain's website (I think his name was Michael) is talking about bloggers. Bloggers, of course, all play Dungeons and Dragons, and live in their mothers' basements. In short, what otherwise passes for a reasoned and well thought out response to a possible embarrassment to the candidate is suddenly brought down to the level of ad hominem attacks. School yard insults. He's calling liberal bloggers nerds. He is, presumably, exempting right wing bloggers from this charge.

And of course, we all know, nerds are losers. They'll never amount to anything. And I thought maybe McCain was making progress when he stole from Wikipedia.

Green Bandit out.