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Added later: perhaps it’d have been useful to contact the Spain for McCain group of US expats (yes indeed, in Spain) to provide more useful, locally informed insight into this silly season issue…

Well, I guess I couldn’t state it any more clearly than that in the title. A plain-English speaking Senator McCain was interviewed last Tuesday, September 16th, for Miami-based and Spanish language Caracol Radio, yet seemingly was widely mistaken for his probable predecessor, by allegedly mistaking whole hemispheres, government leaders and sundry other offenses to intergalactic peace.

Boy howdy, the feverish attempts to portray McCain and Dubya as political and intellectual twins just won’t stop. And in this case, unsurprisingly, the reflexive reaching for prefab prejudiced conclusions turns out as utter bull caca, too. Better yet, David Kurtz himself delivers the proof of his at best strained English comprehension skills right in that same post, as he helpfully provides a YouTube containing the uncut, original English recording of that interview, which — as Caracol Radio is a Spanish-language station — was aired with Spanish voice-over translation mixed over McCain’s English answers, and the original English-language questions spliced out and replaced with their Spanish translation by the female radio show host.

That meme was catapulted across the blogosphere (and beyond) mainly by the otherwise quite respectable Talking Point Memo blog, such as by way of TPM’s hyperventilating David Kurtz who drew the following hasty conclusion:

At first it sounds like McCain is taking a hard neocon line against Prime Minister Zapatero, but as the interviewer continues to press the point, it becomes pretty obvious that McCain has no idea who she’s talking about. His broad, generic answer is clearly meant to cover Latin American leaders generally, known and unknown — sort of a blanket “we’ll stand up to tinpot dictators” — even if they happen to be NATO prime ministers.

Not to be outdone, Josh Marshall himself pontificates under his strikingly candid headline of “Embarrassing” that yep, him there Arizona guy sure is dumb as grass:

Well, we’ve heard the interview now. And John McCain either doesn’t know who the Prime Minister of Spain is, thinks Spain is a country in Latin America, or possibly both. In case, you haven’t seen our updates from last night, yesterday John McCain was interviewed on the Florida affiliate of Spanish radio network Union Radio. And in the interview McCain appeared not to know who the Prime Minister of Spain was and assumed he was some anti-American leftist leader from South America.

Sadly, Josh and David ignored door #3 here: that Senator McCain simply didn’t want to commit at this point of the presidential election circus to making a statement welcoming a meeting with Socialist Prime Minister Zapatero. I mean, c’mon guys, what do you expect in silly season? McCain just bumped even with Obama, in my estimation mostly on account of a far more deft choice of VP candidate to solidify his own conservative base, and you’re expecting him to not dodge the bullet of embracing one of those yurpeen lefty peeps? What, are you pining for Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Coulter & Co to turn against McCain so that he practically loses by default against Obama or what? Oh wait, nevermind…

Well, here’s the deal. Presented as five handy tips for prospective hype peddlers:

1. Make sure that you really have all possible explanations in a row, before you give in to some tendency to cast everything on this side of the Milky Way in a reflexively binary straightjacket of either/or nonsense. Generally, people tend to frown upon positively self-effacing statements along the lines of “There are three kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can’t.”
2. When contacted by buddies in furn places (like, some other side of an ocean, especially in places where they don’t speak English) and tip you off that there’s some brouhaha boiling over there concerning something that took place in your own country, doublecheck.
3. Triple-check. Can’t trust furners. Especially the funny speaking ones (natch).
4. When said buddies are pointing to hyperventilating local news reports in “big media” that bolster their claim of something HUGE that you’re missing, quadruple-check.
5. Know your way around media. Honest, even in places like yurp it’s good to know from which angle of the political spectrum the hot air flows.

So, this is what happened, in a more verbose description: yes, McCain was indeed interviewed in English, by Caracol Radio’s Yoly Cuello (audio available here – note the endearing “Interview to senator McCain” in the title; apparently the trans-Atlantic misspeakage bug affects both sides). As happens almost invariably in such stations, the interview was edited before broadcast, to sub out the English questions with Spanish versions, and the English answers were dubbed with their Spanish voice-over translation (you can listen to the result, the whole lengthy entire interview here).

That long and exclusive interview for a Spanish language station is evidently a major scoop, so it’s no surprise at all that Caracol Radio hit the “all points out” button. Now, it’s important to parenthetically note two things.

First, that Caracol Radio is part of the Unión Radio group of radio stations – which in turn is a subsidiary of the Spanish media conglomerate Grupo Prisa. Among Prisa’s flagship media holdings in Spain are leading newspaper El País, and radio station Cadena SER. So, when Caracol Radio flags their major scoop, it’s no surprise Cadena SER (here’s the audio of the same full-length interview edited to replace the Spanish voices with “local” Castillian accents) and El País (link to their article) jump on it – and from there, a veritable wildfire of news reports spread out about that interview. The Radio Caracol crew had decidedly a good day. There’s even an article on Cadena SER reflecting on the news item itself being news and spreading around.

Second, it’s good to know that relations between US President Bush and Spanish PM Zapatero are so-so, going back to 2004 when Zapatero was elected for his first term and immediately fulfilled his campaign pledge of pulling out all Spanish troops from Iraq – something Bush evidently received with suboptimal enthusiasm. This is how Glenn Kessler and Ed O’Keefe of the WaPo put it:

President Bush has never forgiven Zapatero for pulling troops out of Iraq shortly after his victory in 2004. Though the Spanish prime minister has tried repeatedly to rebuild relations and win an invitation to visit Washington, Bush has yet to hold a formal bilateral meeting with him. Zapatero is a center-left politician, but McCain has suggested that as president he would seek to repair relations that have been badly frayed in Europe during Bush’s tenure. In an early-April interview with a reporter from Spanish newspaper El Pais, McCain said, “This is the moment to leave behind discrepancies with Spain.” He added: “I would like for [President Zapatero] to visit the United States. I am very interested not only in normalizing relations with Spain but in obtaining good and productive relations with the goal of addressing many issues and challenges that we have to confront together.”

So, that should explain why in Spain McCain’s plainly staying lame on playing that same game (yeah, I know) was met with far more than usual attention and interest. Oh by the way, that “reporter from Spanish newspaper El Pais” is Antonio Caño, an obnoxiously slanted Obama groupie who can’t shake his utter adoration in his pieces.

The bottom line of that interview is that McCain was hammering away at his much more open disposition to reestablishing working relations with what otherwise would be called friendly governments, also and especially in Latin America. Last time I checked, Spain isn’t there. And just as naturally, there is much more interest in beefing up relations with Southern neighbor Mexico’s President Calderón, than with Spain’s Zapatero. A plain matter of greater geographic and thus strategic proximity.

Sadly, the following gem dropped by Senator McCain was not picked up, so I thought I’d do the honors and reproduce it here:

Senator Obama has never been South of the border in his entire life

Interesting, isn’t it? Then again, he is HUGE in Germany, so that goes on to demonstrate Obama’s peculiar world vision and apparent priorities, looking at his famous Berlin bath of multitudes, as the Spanish expression goes.

Just to be sure, I’ve just clipped the bit concerning Zapatero and the remaining last seconds of the interview and posted it for your listening pleasure here:

Click the link to hear the audio

So, let’s see what that interview looked like – this is my transcript of that interview by Yoly Cuello of John McCain:

Transcript

Q: Senator, finally, let’s talk about Spain. If you’re elected President, would you be willing to invite President [sic[1]] José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to the White House, to meet with you?

A: I would be willing to meet, eh, with those leaders who are our friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion. And by the way, President Calderón of Mexico is, eh, fighting a, a very, very tough fight against, um, the drug cartels. I’m glad we’re now working in cooperation with the Mexican government on the Meri-, Merida plan, and I intend to move forward with the relations and invite as many of them as I can of those leaders to the White House.

Q: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government? To the President, itself [sic]?

A: Uh, I don’t… I, you know, honestly, I have to look at the relations and the situations and the priorities, but I can assure you: I will establish closer relations with our friends, and I will stand up, eh, to those who want to do harm to the United States of America. I know how to do both.

Q: So, you have to wait and see if, eh, he’s willing to, to meet with you, or you be… able to do it? In the White House?

A: Well, again… I, I don’t… All I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us, and standing up to those who are not, and that’s judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America, and the entire region.

Q: OK, what about Europe? I’m talking about the President of Spain.

A: What about, me, what?

Q: OK… Are you willing to meet with him, if you’re elected President?

A: I’m willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are for human rights, democracy and freedom. And I will stand up to those that do not.

Q: Finally, Senator… Can you say, uh, eh… Eh, I forgot the word… Say hello to the listeners of Caracol Radio?

A: Eh, thank you to the listeners, and thank you all for being involved in this election, which is one of the most important elections in history, and the state of Florida, probably one of those states that decides the future President of the United States. I work hard here, I love the state, and it’s wonderful to be back.

Q: OK, thank you very much.

A: OK. Thank you.

Q: OK. Thank you Senator!

A: Thanks again. Bye!

Q: Bye-bye!

Notas:

1. As I explained, the radio station had a distinct Spanish interest in the interview; in Spain, the government leader is called Presidente del Gobierno since times immemorial, and therefore there's also the awkward idea that it has to be translated as "President", something which in English language - and in English language countries - leads to absurd confusion over the constitutional nature of Spain, decidedly a monarchical parliamentary democracy and not a republic; as Wikipedia also explains, the proper and only correct "translation" of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's current job is Prime Minister. I posted a longer version of this tangential rant on the WordReference forum, in case you really, really care. [↩]

Etiquetas: McCain, Spain, Zapatero, dissing, english, flap, interview, media, spanish, visit

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