John McCain may be sitting out the 2016 Presidential election, but the former candidate’s son made a few headlines this week.
For an admirable reason.
Jack McCain jumped on Twitter on Monday after the Internet does what the Internet far too often does:
Act all crazy and stupid and really, really, really racist.
In this case, McCain felt a need to get involved in a debate over a new Old Navy ad that features a white man, an African-American woman and their mixed-race son.
If you don’t see the problem with that… well… you are not crazy, stupid and really racist.
The poster went viral last Friday when the retail chain offered a 30 percent discount to its customers via a Tweet that depicted this interracial family simply standing around and looking happy.
But because some people are crazy and stupid and racist, they wrote responses such as:
Absolutely disgusting. What’s next? Gender neutral bathrooms? Pedophilia acceptance propaganda!? Never shopping here again.
And also: Stop promoting miscegenation or else I’m taking my $ $ $ elsewhere.
Jack McCain could not sit idly by and let these bigots win.
“To the people upset about the #OldNavy #Scandal” of a picture of a mixed race marriage, eat it,” he wrote along with the photo above, which includes his wife, Air Force Reserve Captain Renee Swift, who is black.
A short while later, the Navy lieutenant shared a second picture (below), this one from their 2013 wedding in San Francisco.
“I hope this one burns too, you ignorant racists,” he wrote.
From there, Swift got in on the action, posting a third image of her and Jack and writing:
“I was just in @OldNavy this weekend! Bought something for me and my husband. #LoveWins.”
There’s not much more we need to add, so we’ll let McCain have the final words via an interview with The Navy Times:
The mere fact that this is a conversation in the year 2016 is disheartening enough, and why this type of response – like the one aimed at Old Navy – merits conversation.
I did not intend for this level of exposure. Mostly, I wanted to take a principled stand on an issue that shouldn’t be one in the first place.
If there is one result I could hope for out of all of this furor, it would be helping to ensure that intolerance has no place in service, or in our national discourse.