McCain goes all-in on war games

The above photo, taken last week by Melina Mara from the Washington Post caused quite a media frenzy and quickly went viral.

So what’s the big deal about someone playing a harmless game of online poker on their iPhone? Hmm, where to start?

Who?

The hands in the photo belong to US senator John McCain. The same John McCain who ran as the Republican nominee in the 2008 presidential election. Also the same John McCain who has always been a staunch opponent of online gambling.

He voted in favour of the 1998 Internet Gambling Amendment that would have criminalized the act of gambling online with fines of up to $500, 3 months imprisonment or both applying to Americans caught placing bets online. That one failed to pass.

He also voted in favour of the UIGEA in 2006, a law that did pass and is still in effect. UIGEA isn’t the restriction on civil liberties that the 1998 attempt was, aimed more at payment facilitators than players. However it’s still prohibitory in nature.

The clear message here is that senator McCain does not like online gambling. Not for the American people anyway. For him personally…well it seems he’s a fan.

Perhaps a little case of, “do as I say, not as I do“?

Where and When?

To be fair, there is a chance that senator McCain was diligently researching the latest developments in  online poker in order to be more informed when it comes to either introducing or supporting new measures to ban it. Even so, he perhaps should have considered some other time to do his research than last Tuesday’s Senate hearing into whether the United State’s should undertake military action against Syria.

While John Kerry stated his case for US lead bombing of Syria, a reasonably serious topic I would have thought, senator McCain was absorbed in an altogether different battle.  Unfortunately for McCain this was noticed and snapped by a reporter.

Luckily there wasn’t a vote on whether a military strike should occur. McCain could well have made the ‘all in’ call thinking he was teaching  Poker_Champ#73 a lesson rather than Syria. Then again, probably wouldn’t have made a difference to the result if he had been paying attention.

McCain has since tried to make light of his pants down moment, tweeting

Scandal! Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing – worst of all I lost!

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) September 3, 2013

Responses to this, and verbal attempts to trivialize the gaff haven’t been very positive.

As you can imagine, comedians are having a field day with this also. Jon Stewart’s take on it is well worth a look.