Any Congressional Medal of Honor winner can be classified almost immediately as an extraodinary man, and Rear Admiral James Stockdale, who passed away yesterday, certainly was. Michelle Malkin has a post with a number of links and quotes about the man, and Power Line's John Hinderaker elaborates further. If after reading those two posts, and his Medal of Honor citation, you're still amused by the memory of his performance in the Vice Presidential debate in 1992 then I would advise you to grow up.
I thought immediately of Dennis Miller's discussion of Stockdale, who was the butt of jokes after that debate, and Brainster's Blog has dug up the quote from Miller:
"Now I know (Stockdale's name has) become a buzzword in this culture for doddering old man, but let's look at the record, folks. The guy was the first guy in and the last guy out of Vietnam, a war that many Americans, including our present President, did not want to dirty their hands with.
The reason he had to turn his hearing aid on at that debate is because those f***ing animals knocked his eardrums out when he wouldn't spill his guts. He teaches philosophy at Stanford University, he's a brilliant, sensitive, courageous man. And yet he committed the one unpardonable sin in our culture: he was bad on television.
"Somewhere out there Paddy Chayefsky must be laughing his ass off. ..."
Yes, that's it. Dismissively, Reagan was just "good on television", and Stockdale was just "bad on television." Except that they weren't. What Stockdale was, instead, was someone who was not a politician. Rather than be impressed by the substance of the man, the public mocked him for his self-deprecating line "Who am I? Why am I here?" during the debate, and the fact that he couldn't ramble incoherently for 5 minutes just to fill his time in the debate. He said what he needed to when making his point, then he stopped. Politically, and in his Vietnam service and courage, he was no John Kerry. Thank God.
The NY Times obituary mentions his debate opening statement, but goes on to explain why he did it.
While the statement transformed him into the butt of jokes from late-night comedians, he later wrote in The World & I magazine that he had chosen his words deliberately to showcase his basic view of himself that "I am a philosopher."
UPDATE: Will Franklin, blogging at Wizbang in Kevin Aylward's absence, notes his passing as well. So does Outside The Beltway.
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