No dogs, Irish or short-asses need apply

It's one thing to argue that John McCain is too old, too liberal, too conservative (if you're an Obama supporter), or has too many health problems to be President.
It takes a massive load of chutzpah, however, to assert that McCain is unqualified to be President because he's too short. Yet, that's what Marion McKeone, an Irish journalist, wrote in the May 25, 2008 edition of the Sunday Tribune, an Irish national newspaper.
Clearly of the opinion that John McCain is too conservative, McKeone writes, "[A]mericans don't want a president who sounds like Dr. Evil but looks like Mini-Me. A leader that stands head and shoulders above global thugs is a literal as well as a metaphorical ideal."
Get that? Doesn't matter about McCain's military service, his long experience in the Senate, the administration he would call upon, or whatever else. Because, writes McKeone, "It's bad for the fragile American psyche if the leader of the free world is the midget at heads of state photo ops."
"This is especially true," continues McKeone, "when he promises as pugnacious a foreign policy as McCain does, what with bombing Iran and kicking around Iraq for another 100 years." (What did I tell you about this paddy reporter being of the mindset that McCain is too conservative?)
It's certainly true that some people who exercise their right to vote abuse it by choosing style over substance, but Americans are not so fragile that they'd vote in an extreme liberal with too little experience simply because he stood taller. McKeone, of course, disagrees:
"Barack Obama, on the other hand, may be shy of experience on the international front but he is over six foot tall and possesses the sort of physical grace and presence that would eclipse any head of state likely to share a stage with him."
So, according to McKeone, it's OK to sign the house away, as Obama will surely do, as long as he towers above the other world leaders he happens to share a platform with.
Make sense? I thought not.
Because McKeone lives in New York, she is obviously of the self-important opinion that she knows Americans and can call the shots on behalf of the rest of us. That takes one hell of an ego in and of itself.
But to call John McCain a "midget" and "Mini-Me," that's just arrogance on a mind-blowing scale. But of course, what else would you expect of tall people who pride themselves on a physical attribute they did absolutely nothing to earn? A muscular physique, honed by hours in the gym and on the cross-country route: that's something you put blood, sweat and tears into. A vertical frame over six feet tall: that's something you were given by nature. You never paid for it nor punished yourself physically for it.
Nevertheless, it's amazing the amount of people out there who act as if that were the case. To be quite honest, if McKeone were a man, I'd say he was one of these lanky dorks who wear nothing shorter than Bermuda shorts during the summer because his chicken legs are just too laughable. The kind of guy who's been shoulder-barged out of the way by men shorter and far more muscular than him his whole life and is considerably bitter about it.
Marion McKeone, being a woman, however, is obviously the very haughty sort who probably wears six-inch heels to further augment her already Amazonian frame and sees any man less than 6 feet tall as not worthy of being alive. McKeone's attitude toward McCain clearly reflects that attitude. I think it's fair to say that McKeone's head is in the clouds both literally and figuratively.
Perhaps McKeone can tell us about anyone else in her life who went through what McCain did, anyone else she personally knows who, when given the choice of escaping the hell he found himself in, chose to stay and be further tortured on behalf of his fellow countrymen. But, never mind, McCain is a short-ass, so he can't really be that strong a character, can he?
McKeone asserts that America "is a nation that imbibes Hollywood glitz with its powdered baby food." Again, McKeone betrays her own specialist knowledge of American society because most of the iconic and well-known and renowned actors, from Tom Cruise to Michael J. Fox, from Al Pacino to Martin Sheen, from Elijah Wood to Dustin Hoffman, are 5-foot-7 or under.
Even the Fonz was 5-foot-6. American icons rarely get tougher than him. McKeone, of course, would disagree.