Young and Sweet, Only 72
Walter Isaacson chats with John McCain about Abba:
Speaking to Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Institute in Colorado on Thursday, McCain found himself explaining a recent interview with Blender Magazine in which he selected ABBA’s 1976 track “Dancing Queen” as his favorite song.
“What were you thinking?,” Isaacson asked him, looking incredulous.
“If there is anything I am lacking in, I’ve got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life,” McCain joked. “I’ve got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again.”
Yes, yes, we get it — John McCain is so famously reluctant to discuss his POW experience or exploit it for political gain that he manages to bring it up in the context of wildly unrelated questions about his affection for 1970s-era Scandinavian pop acts. And wait a minute — Abba’s from the seventies! Spencer Ackerman notes:
What? McCain was shot down in 1967. ABBA began making music in 1972. Don’t try this shit on me, McCain! Your POW experience has nothing to do with your Partridgey musical taste.
Something to ponder over your weekend. This is really kind of a softball question, it should be possible for McCain to give a more normal answer.
66 Responses to “Young and Sweet, Only 72”
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August 15th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I’m sorry, but McCain really should take more heat for comments like this. I don’t think he’s intentionally lying, but he is connection to reality is clearly tenuous at best.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Who gives a flying fuck whether his favorite song is “more normal?”
What’s telling is that he apparently instinctively brings up his POW experience when he gets a question he doesn’t know how to answer. Regardless of what the question was about. Either that’s for political reasons, which doesn’t reflect well on him. Or it’s because his life/thinking really does still revolve around those years as a POW, which makes him dangerous as a president.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
FIVE AND A HALF YEARS, MATTHEW, FIVE AND A HALF YEARS!
That’s his excuse for everything from adultery (per Hannity) to wanting to start WWIII (he knows how to win wars because he was a POW) to his lame-ass taste in music . Any Abba song is only slightly less horrible that that musical masterpiece by Charlene “I’ve Never Been to Me”.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
McCain shouldn’t have invoked his war experience to answer such a question, but Spencer’s wrong in suggesting that McCain’s logic is flawed. McCain is saying that his taste in music “stopped” when he got shot down. So by the time 1976 came around, McCain had stopped worrying about music 9 years prior, thereby rendering him (per his explanation) without a critical taste in music.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I think it’s a shameless attempt to court the gay vote. Pretty sure it’s not gonna work.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
You know, he could have just said something like “Sorry, it’s catchy. I like it.”
August 15th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
he likes it because it is a good song! he should have answered that.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
He likes the song because he saw Cindy dancing to it and that was when he knew he just had divorce the no longer sexy 1st wife.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
This criticism of McCain ranks right up there with republican criticism of the “fist jab”.
Seriously, it was pretty obvious it was an off the cuff attempt at poking fun at himself. You all would of laughed if you were their.
Let’s get back to the issues.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
But does anyone have the video??? I was watching the live feed from cnn.com yesterday… And when McCain started defending ABBA, He was flailing his arms around and truly looked senile, and ironically the screen went grey… then the stream quit completely. I swear somebody pulled the plug to protect McCain from himself.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
It’s not even stylistically like anything from ‘67!
On the other hand, it IS a good song. Used (well, a cover, anyway) brilliantly over the closing credits of a movie about another famous Republican, Dick.
In 30 or so years, we’ll have presidentially nominees listing “Hey Ya” as their favorite song. The future is going to be scary.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Abba is ridiculously catchy, so I could see someone thinking of it when asked to name a favorite song if they don’t listen to music much.
That said, comments #5 and #8 were hilarious.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Complete this sentence: She handles that mic like a ….
August 15th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Yeah, Kevin at #8 figured it out. It’s the music/wood connection in geezers.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I used to work with this guy who liked ABBA even though he wasn’t 72 and didn’t impact a surface-to-air missile with his own airplane. He was actually a pretty hip guy, so I was surprised he liked ABBA.
Later he had a sex change. Now, I’m not saying everybody who likes ABBA wants to get a sex change. Still, it kinda makes me wonder what else McCain might have in common with my former coworker.
And I really don’t know why he has to apologize for liking ABBA at all, unless he doesn’t really like them. Now, if he’d confessed an appreciation for, say, Captain Beefheart I’d say that merited at least a couple of follow up questions…
August 15th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Really, it could be a new drinking game. Just like “Hi Bob.”
August 15th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Give McCain a break. The guy’s in a bind. First, you has zippo taste. Second, the Swedish pop was a safe choice because any living American artist he would have picked would have quickly and loudly disassociated him/herself from McCain. Bruce Springsteen? John Mellencamp? Jackson Browne? I’m sure they’re not alone. It would be the kiss of death for anyone younger than Pat Boone to have John McCain pick your song as his favorite.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
I DEMAND to know why McCain insists on putting Sweden first.
August 15th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Hey, just a couple weeks ago, I downloaded a bunch of ABBA videos. They weren’t a bad band. Certainly no worse than any of the other “pop rock” bands around either then or now. “Dancing Queen” wasn’t even their best song, although obviously it played well with teenage girls. “Summer Night City” (done live), “Knowing Me, Knowing You” and “Eagle” are my favorites.
And the girls certainly looked better than monkey-face Mick Jagger (even if the Corrs love the Stones and vice versa).
However, I would have expected McCain to pick Tex Ritter as his favorite band. Or maybe Frank Sinatra…
August 15th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
He can’t mention his REAL favorite song, which is the Obama song by Ludacris.
August 15th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Wouldn’t some staffer with the campaign just tell McCain to list a fairly recent popular song as his favorite instead of the disgusting truth?
http://www.political-buzz.com/
August 15th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
BTW, Matt, that’s one CRAPPY video of Abba doing “Dancing Queen”. According to YouTube, that video occurred as follows:
“ABBA donned traditional 18th Century costumes when they first performed this song for King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden the night before he was married to Silvia Sommerlath on 18/06/1976.”
Try these ABBA videos instead to get a better flavor:
ABBA – Knowing Me, Knowing You – 1976
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKDdaVRNGwE
ABBA “Summer Night City” – Live at Wembley Arena, 1979 (great intro)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLWHWhA2vxU&feature=related
Another version:
ABBA “Summer Night City” – Live at Japan Music Fair, November 1978
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68tKdAgr_ec&feature=related
August 15th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I’ll just bet that, if McCain had a do-over and could think about it for a while, he’d pick “I Fought The Law” by the Bobby Fuller Four. It has a really nice late-rockabilly feel to it, in addition to being nearly as perfect a pop song as “Dancing Queen”.
Also Bobby Fuller committed suicide, so the repudiation factor hinted at upthread wouldn’t be in play.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Why should McCain have to provide a more “normal” favorite song? Why can’t he just like what he likes?
August 15th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
You’re not that bright, Matt.
McCain, like many veterans who ultimately returned from their tours in Viet Nam, went through the normal good and bad adjustments of war veterans. In McCain’s case, after further hosptialization and service reorientation including restoration of his U.S. Navy flying status, he was reassigned to take command of a squadron in Florida. It was there that he met his next wife, Cindy, while still married to Carol. Of course, he remembers this song well as it happened in 1976, the year that Abba released Dancing Queen. But you didn’t expect him to say that, did you Harvard boy?
I called my father and a couple of other VN veterans who served with him, asking about their musical tastes and favorite songs. Not one of them named any songs published and performed initially after the mid ’70s. I asked why. One gentleman explained, [I recorded it] “Well, look. The music back then was excellent. It was part of what kept us alive when we weren’t in action. And it reminded us of our women, kids, home, and all that we believed in and loved. New music for me died not long after my last tour. I still play the same music. That may explain why I am still healthy at this age. We wouldn’t have made it home without those songs, Bill.”
Of course, you’ve never served, Matt. You have no clue.
.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
You’re not that bright, Matt.
McCain, like many veterans who ultimately returned from their tours in Viet Nam, went through the normal good and bad adjustments of war veterans. In McCain’s case, after further hosptialization and service reorientation including restoration of his U.S. Navy flying status, he was reassigned to take command of a squadron in Florida. It was there that he met his next wife, Cindy, while still married to Carol. Of course, he remembers this song well as it happened in 1976, the year that Abba released Dancing Queen. But you didn’t expect him to say that, did you Harvard boy?
I called my father and a couple of other VN veterans who served with him, asking about their musical tastes and favorite songs. Not one of them named any songs published and performed initially after the mid ’70s. I asked why. One gentleman explained, [I recorded it] “Well, look. The music back then was excellent. It was part of what kept us alive when we weren’t in action. And it reminded us of our women, kids, home, and all that we believed in and loved. New music for me died not long after my last tour. I still play the same music. That may explain why I am still healthy at this age. We wouldn’t have made it home without those songs, Bill.”
Of course, you’ve never served, Matt. You have no clue.
.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Is this you, Movie Guy?
August 15th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Lets see my choice is John McCain or that smart black man Barack Obama?
McCain who does not know how to use a computer but is willing to learn if we elect him – I’ll just vote for that smart black man.
My Choices are: John McCain who says the economic downturn is psychological? – Na! I’ll vote for the smart black man.
McCain who says you are better off under George Bush? – Nope I’ll vote for the smart black man.
Mc Cain who wants to continue killing more people looking for weapons of mass destruction that do not exist? – Gee! I’ll vote for the smart black man.
McCain who believes that we should stay the course but is not willing to support the people he puts in harms way. – I’ll take a chance on the smart black man.
Should I vote for a man that does not know that 9-11 was caused by Osama Bin Laden not Sedam Hussein? – Easy! I’ll vote for the smart black man.
Vote for the man who does not know if the Sunnis or Sheits are our enemies? – No way I’ll vote for the smart black man.
Vote for the man who helped put our government on the China, Saudi Arabia credit card? – Not a chance I’ll vote for the smart black man.
Vote for the man with the worst temper in the Senate to have his finger on the nuclear button? – No way – I’ll vote for the smart black man.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Like the rest of you, I’m far too hip to listen to Abba.
However, unlike the rest of you, I do acknowledge that they’ve sold hundreds of millions of albums worldwide, many of them in this country.
Scoff all you like, Abba is more popular than John McCain and not a bad choice for him to be touting because Abba speaks to the demographic groups who trust McCain the least.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
1) Actually, this is the kickoff to a top secret Karl Rove covert op –codename “Operation Momma Mia”.
2) Rove will infiltrate agents into the Democratic Convention who look like the superdelegates and during the rollcall on Hillary’s token nomination will momentarily make it look as if enough superdelegates have switched to give Hillary the nomination.
When Howard Dean tells the convention it was a mistake, bloody riots break out on the floor as 200 pound muscular lesbian supporters of Hillary pull off their lumberjack shirts and start beating the living shit out of male delegates — DNC girly boys who look like Matthew.
3) Across the nation, cities start burning as the outrage spreads. As fear mounts, John McCain saves the nation with strong leadership. He puts out a campaign ad showing him in his Navy Whites –tossing back a shot of Smirinoff vodka and singing to his misty-eyed drinking buddy Hillary:
“If you change your mind…
I’ll be the first in line
Take a chance on me”
Across the nation, females of all ages swoon and grow weak at the knees.
4)Obama never has a chance. On election night, McCain preempts Obama’s concession call by calling Obama and singing:
“The Winner takes it all…”
Omigod. I knew I should not have taken my wife to that stupid movie. ABBA music is the mental equivalent of a computer virus — destroys all higher order brain functions.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
The point here is not the POW story as such. That’s just McCain’s hook for articulating the old populist message that real men don’t have taste. Under the the phony self-effacing rap, McCain is actually proudly saying, “Look, I’m a man of action. I have neither the time nor the inclination to cultivate pansy refinements like musical taste, an appreciation for poetry, a tutored eye for the fine arts, or a dainty palette. I’m not an Esquire dandy GQ fashion plate.”
We need to make fun of his shoes more often.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
but he is connection to reality is clearly tenuous at best.
he’s into Grandpa Simpson territory – he doesn’t know if he’s fighting the Kaiser or Hitler and he’ll be damned if another gook is gonna pull his fingernails out because Johnny Reb is fighting for Dixie !
August 15th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
As usual, Don Williams wins the thread.
“DNC girly boys who look like Matthew.”
Priceless.
August 15th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Actually, I think McCain’s retort is lame as it was, but would have been awesome if he had made it more explicit, e.g. “i got shot down and beaten with sticks by commies for five years so i dont need no hipster’s permission to like abba DANCING QUEEN! FUK Y’ALLLLLLLL!”
August 15th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
So I tracked down the Blender article:
http://www.blender.com/WhiteHouseDJBattle/articles/39518.aspx
Turns out McCain submitted a Top 10, and Take a Chance On Me was #3. So he really is a hard core ABBA fan.
Incidentally, he also lists Good Vibrations–but I thought his favorite Beach Boys song was Barbara Ann.
August 16th, 2008 at 12:13 am
he’s into Grandpa Simpson territory
When he got shot down, he had an onion tied to his belt, which was the style at the time.
August 16th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Movie Guy, your reading comprehension is just not that good.
McCain, unlike pretty much every other Vet I know, including my 90 year old father, constantly refers to that defining moment of his service. You can’t beat war stories out of these guys.
The point is that he uses any excuse to refer to his imprisonment despite his constant denial of said behavior. Even his favorite song. He opens his campaign appearances with a 3 minute video that hammers the point home that he spent six years in a NV prison.
McCain is a physically tough and brave guy, no question. He might be great to have a beer with and a tough out in a bar fight. But he does not have the temperament, judgment or ideas necessary to be our President.
August 16th, 2008 at 12:20 am
I thought in the article I read about Jackson Browne making McCain stop using his song in ads it mentioned that John Mellencamp and ABBA among others have mad esimilar requests. SO apparantly even retired Swedish disco-pop bands are against McCain.
And to all the conservatives trying to equate this to the fist bump and so on. The issue isn’t McCain’s lack of musical taste, that is just a humorous side light. The issue is the way he once again brings up the POW thing. You know that topic he is supposedly unwilling to ever talk about or exploit for political purposes that he manages to bring up in every Q&A even when the topic is sa fluff piece about what music he likes.
It is pretty pathetic that he never brought it up to condemn the use of torture which he supposedly opposed (of course as ususal his maverick positions tend to disappear once the time to vote the party line comes along). You know using it where it is actually relevent? How powerfull would it have been if McCain had asked the Bush admin flunkies testifying if such and such specific thing that was done in Abu Gharib and Gitmo was torture and then when they said no it was an enhanced interogation technique he pointed out that that was exactly what was done to him in ‘Nam?
August 16th, 2008 at 1:32 am
wow, obama listed Fugees, Ready Or Not as his number 1!!!
I can do what you do, easy, BELIEVE ME
Frontin’ niggas give me hee-bee-gee-bees
So while you’re imitating Al Capone
I’ll be Nina Simone
And defacating on your microphone.
At least he didn’t pick Zealots:
Quick now, cause you runnin’ out of lucka
Playin’ Mr. Big, I’m gonna get you sucka.
While you munchin at your luncheon, I’ll be planning your
assassination
Then hit you like the Dutchmen
August 16th, 2008 at 5:25 am
Abba has made at least one song that is absolutely brilliant (there’s a great cover version by Blancmange).
Also, anybody who has been to a gay club or has stayed at a wedding until the wee hours has to admit that their music has a certain universality.
August 16th, 2008 at 5:36 am
He picked the gayest song of all time? Wow. The base is not going to like that.
August 16th, 2008 at 11:03 am
I think this whole discussion is too Little Green Footballs-ish for the left-blogosphere. I don’t even understand what the point is to be made about John McCain’s liking the song. It seems as irrelevant and uninteresting as whether he prefers strawberries, bananas, pears or blueberries to the other fruits.
In other words, I think this post just serves to make us look bad.
August 16th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I don’t even understand what the point is to be made about John McCain’s liking the song. It seems as irrelevant and uninteresting as whether he prefers strawberries, bananas, pears or blueberries to the other fruits.
The criticism being made by Matt and others is not that McCain likes a dorky band or its gayest song, but that McCain found a way to tie in his P.O.W. story——a story he doesn’t like to mention——to such a softball Q&A session. If, as in your example, he’d been asked about favorite foods and he’d said “Twinkies”, and he’d explained how being shot down, imprisoned, and deprived of everything he knew and loved made him like Twinkies all that much more, then it would be just another instance of him bringing up his hero/service/sacrifice story despite telling us how much he DOESN’T LIKE TALKING ABOUT IT.
The point, he’s a liar. He LOVES talking about his P.O.W. experience and he is basing his entire campaign on it. And he is so ambitious and unscrupulous at this point that he will tie in that story to ANYTHING that comes up in conversation. Even ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” And he has so little offer in the way of actual expertise, leadership, or knowledge——and he knows it——that all he can do is bring up the P.O.W. story and hope that people continue to think that “former P.O.W.” = “ready to be POTUS”.
August 16th, 2008 at 11:57 am
McCain’s only-just-revealed fondness for Abba surely can’t in any way be related to the fact that Mamma Mia! is a hit in the movie theaters right now and is especially appealing to the Hillary Clinton Voter demographic.
Naww. That would be silly.
August 16th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
WOW. I like John McCain’s taste in music more than Obama’s.
/ punches self in face.
August 16th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
McCain’s fondness for ABBA might be a generational thing. My late father (who would have turned 74 this year) was also fond of ABBA. Although my did was in the service like McCain(he was a weatherman in the Air Force in the mid 1950s), he never saw combat duty. So McCain’s stint in the Hanoi Hilton has nothing to do with his fondness for ABBA; ABBA simply is a group that seems to appeal to men who were in their forties during the 1970s.
My dad also liked Pink Floyd’s album The Wall for some reason. Wonder if McCain has a fondness for songs like “Comfortably Numb.”
August 16th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Yeah, this looks like a shameless shoehorning of McCain’s POW experience into an otherwise irrelevant question. McCain was actually being kind of disingenuous in claiming to be totally out of it as regards pop culture — take a look at Entertainment Weekly’s current Pop Culture Showdown between the two candidates, and you’ll see that McCain actually holds his own against Obama. No joke — he even likes “The Wire” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm”!
To be fair, I remember a presidential candidate a few years back who also shoehorned his Vietnam experience into virtually every utterance. Fellow by the name of Kerry.
August 16th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Yeah, but does he like “Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles”?
If he doesn’t like Cameron, fuck ‘im.
August 16th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Veterans: Bush Sr, Dole, Gore, Kerry
Losers: Bush Sr, Dole, Gore, Kerry
Five in a row?
August 16th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Whoever said upthread “I’m too hip to like ABBA” got it backwards, ABBA are now considered one of the greatest pop groups all time. You’re NOT hip if you don’t like them.
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