New Letter redone and Sourced

Earlier this month I sent a letter to the editor written in satirical form in which I had reversed some facts in the life of Cindy and John McCain, replacing them with Michelle and Barack Obama. I was told the letter was to be printed and then a few days later The News Press called and reversed themselves on the printing of it. I was told that News Press readers didn’t understand satire, The News Press would be criticized and that my facts had to be sourced.

So here is what I wrote about along with sourcing and facts behind the original satirical piece:

1. John McCain is an adulterer who had left his former model first wife after returning home from Viet Nam and finding her crippled and disfigured from a car accident. Cindy McCain stole another woman's husband.

From News Leader.com Springfield, MO:

…..A romantic beginning to John McCain's relationship with Cindy Hensley, a 24-year-old former cheerleader and multimillionaire beer heiress. Only problem, John McCain was married to Carol, mother of his children. A beautiful tall, slender blonde model when he married her, Carol was severely injured in a car accident while he was in the war, which left her four inches shorter, gaining some weight, and needing crutches to walk. Cindy was not the first acknowledged extramarital affair of the conservative presidential candidate who admits to years of multiple sexual affairs, but she was the one he abandoned his wife of 14 years for.

John McCain lied when he wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began his sexual affair with Henley in the spring of 1979; court documents verify that he did not sue his wife for divorce until February 1980 and cohabited with her until January 7, 1980, during the first nine months of his adultery with Cindy…..

2. Cindy McCain became addicted to prescriptions drugs and stole drugs from a charity she had started for poor children:

From Salon.com News by Amy Sullivan:

How Cindy McCain was outed for drug addiction

….McCain admitted, she had stolen the drugs from the American Voluntary Medical Team, her own charity, and had been investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration….

3. Cindy McCain lied about Mother Theresa asking her to take two orphans from Bangladesh:

From Seattlepi.com by Frank Rich

…Nothing is too small or sacred for the McCain campaign to lie about. It was even caught (by The Christian Science Monitor) peddling an imaginary encounter between Cindy McCain and Mother Teresa when Cindy McCain was adopting her daughter in Bangladesh….

So the point of my original letter was that if any of this had been about Michelle and Barack Obama there would not be this silence from the press or cable. It would have been put on a video loop and run constantly from now until Election Day. But it seems that because John McCain is a former POW any other aspects of his life cannot be written or talked about.

And so News Press there are your facts, sourced like you asked. Now do you have the guts to print it?

gingersnapp