Yesterday, longtime United States Senator, former Presidential Candidate and decorated war hero John McCain passed away at the age of 81 after a long health battle. His death was widely mourned on social media platforms, and many networks interrupted previously scheduled programming for segments honoring the late politician. NBC was no exception. The Peacock Network offered up a special report and then asked viewers to switch over to its sister station, MSNBC, for further coverage. Unfortunately, when NBC switched back to its regular programming, the transition happened during an, ummmmm, less than ideal moment. Check it out...
Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes. I mean, what else can you even say? This is why most networks choose to go from the special report into a commercial or directly into something else people in the editing room have a little more control over. If you go straight back into live programming, you can end up with a worst case scenario like shirtless fat guys dressed up as dolphins who are sexually attracted to each other on America's Got Talent. I mean, that has to be the worst case scenario, right? It's like a fake movie Luke Wilson might have seen when he went to the future in Idiocracy. I've got a vivid imagination, and while I can come up with more graphic things, I can't come up with something that would be further off tone.
Fortunately, John McCain, while an often very serious man, actually had a good sense of humor about him. He appeared on Saturday Night Live several times, and even hosted while he was a Senator. He had fun too, venturing beyond the vaguely funny political or self-deprecating sketches most choose to do and also playing characters as wild as a Lifetime Original Movie stalker. As such, I'm pretty confident he would have laughed harder at this dolphin nonsense than anyone else. Besides, he got so many other tributes from so many other famous people that it's not like this overshadowed anything. In the end, it will just be a funny and maybe even fitting footnote to his passing.
I say fitting because the primary thing most people seem to be focusing on in the wake of John McCain's death is his original spirit. Regardless of where an individual person's opinions may fall, a majority of Americans had at least a begrudging respect for his willingness to step up and vocalize his opinion, whether it aligned with his party or not. He had the courage and conviction to truly be himself, regardless of what others may have thought. And in the end, couldn't you say the same thing about grown men willing to dress up as shirtless dolphins on television?
OK. Maybe that's a bit of a stretch. Regardless, CinemaBlend's sincerest well-wishes go out to the late Senator's entire family including his wife Cindy and his mother Roberta McCain, the widow of decorated Admiral John S McCain Jr, who is still kicking at 106.
