Wonkette

Here is a video clip of John McCain declaring that he graduated fifth from the bottom of his class in the Naval Academy. This is supposed to make all you elitists turn purple with rage that such a terrible slacker would ever dare to run for president, when in fact it just shows that John McCain was cool, once: too cool for school, in fact, in the years before school was officially invented. The bit about his wife having to turn on his computer for him is just embarrassing, though. [YouTube via AmericaBlog]

John McCain spent day three of his “Service to America” tour much like he did day two: by telling everyone younger than him that they’re a bunch of lazy sallies. He went to Annapolis and its Naval Academy, where he graduated like last in his class. He said “too few Americans live up to their civic responsibilities and challenged them to do more to serve their community and country.” Then he listed all the trouble he caused as a young midshipman whose father and grandfather were both admirals. He also forgot an entire page of his prepared remarks, because he is too old to read. MORE »

There is a long-standing and completely pointless Naval tradition called the Herndon Climb, in which somebody greases up a 21 foot granite pole, tops it with a hat and makes 1,000 young men and women try to scale it while dousing them with water and nobody says anything about gays in the military. It might, however, be on its way out because the Naval Academy is afraid someone might get hurt. Apparently, they don’t teach or allow any irony whatsoever, as a school that is ostensibly training only straight men and women to go to war is afraid that having them engage in climbing a greased-up stone shaft because someone might get hurt. After the jump, some pictures of this proud, but potentially dying tradition.

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