Robert Stacy McCain

Robert Stacy McCain

Born (1959-10-06) October 6, 1959
Atlanta, Georgia
Education Jacksonville State University
Occupation Journalist, columnist, editor, blogger, author, political activist
Notable credit(s) The Washington Times, Donkey Cons, theothermccain.com
Religion Protestant Christian
Website http://theothermccain.com/

Robert Stacy McCain (born October 6, 1959) is an American conservative journalist, writer, and blogger. McCain is a former assistant national editor and reporter for The Washington Times and co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of the 2006 book Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party. He is proprietor of the blog, The Other McCain.

Biography

McCain was born on October 6, 1959[1] in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated in 1983 from Jacksonville State University in Alabama. His journalism career began with the (now defunct) Cobb News-Chronicle in 1986. He then worked as a sports editor for the Marietta, Georgia-based Neighbor Newspapers, before joining the Calhoun (Ga.) Times as sports editor in September 1987. The Calhoun newspaper is a division of Rome, Georgia-based News Publishing Co.

In 1991, McCain joined the staff of the company's flagship daily newspaper, The Rome News-Tribune, working closely with special projects/editorial page editor Pierre Rene-Noth. Frequently writing about such subjects as education and history, McCain was awarded a George Washington Honor Medal from the conservative Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge for his 1995 series of columns about the National Standards for U.S. History.

The Washington Times

McCain joined the staff of The Washington Times in November 1997. In addition to his regular duties as an editor, McCain also contributed numerous by-lined news and feature articles to The Washington Times. He frequently reported on controversial issues in the “culture war,” including stories related to sexuality, education, and history. His writing about communism included feature stories about Joseph McCarthy, The Black Book of Communism, and the obituary of former U.S. Communist Party leader Gus Hall. McCain's reporting on controversies surrounding sexuality included features about Alfred Kinsey, the Jesse Dirkhising murder case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Judith Levine’s controversial 2002 book, Harmful to Minors.[2]

In 2003, McCain was named editor of the “Culture, Etc.” page of The Washington Times, which appears on Page A2 of the newspaper Monday through Friday. Over the years, McCain interviewed many prominent authors and personalities.

In 2006, McCain co-wrote Donkey Cons with Lynn Vincent (ISBN 978-1-59555-024-8), and created a blog to promote the book.[3]

McCain also contributed freelance articles, reviews and commentary pieces to a number of publications including The American Spectator,[4] Reason,[5] The American Conservative,[6] Ripon Forum,[7] and Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture,[8] as well as such online forums as The Conservative Voice[9] and The American Thinker.[10]

After The Washington Times

In January 2008, McCain announced he would resign from The Washington Times in order to concentrate on a book project[11] and began blogging about the 2008 presidential race as "The Other McCain".

In March 2010, McCain returned to the Times as a freelance writer, covering a New York congressional race with a candidate with connections to the Tea Party.

On March 13, 2013, McCain was named the editor-in-chief at ViralRead.com.[12]

Personal life

McCain lives on the Atlantic Seaboard with his wife. They have six children, whom they homeschooled.[13] He is a Baptist, and has remarked, "I am a poor excuse for a Christian, but I really do have a deep faith in God".[13]

McCain frequently derides Senator John McCain as "Crazy Cousin John". The distant kinship is based on a common ancestor in South Carolina listed in the 1790 Census.[14]

Controversy

The Southern Poverty Law Center reported in 2000 that McCain was once a member of the League of the South.[15][16] In December 2002, Michelangelo Signorile reported in the New York Press that McCain had written on Free Republic under a pseudonym:[17]

[T]he media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sister-in-law, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us.

Views and opinions

McCain was once a Democrat, but now supports conservative Republicans; he has said that "anything that is good for the Democratic Party is bad for America, and vice versa."[13] He pointed to reading back issues of The Freeman, a libertarian magazine, through the mid-1990s, to explain his political conversion. McCain now identifies himself as a supporter of Austrian economic theory in the vein of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. He has come to believe that government imposition of broader social goals such as "social justice" cannot work out as a practical matter. He also calls himself "profoundly skeptical of radical notions of moral and political progress" in social issues, citing Edmund Burke as an influence.[13]

McCain said in March 2010 that he disagreed with the invasion of Iraq and wanted to express his criticism publicly at the time, but he could not do so since his supervisors and colleagues at The Washington Times did not approve. He remarked that "Any way you look at it, war is a very bad thing," while adding "but losing a war is worse" [italics in the original].[13]

Mediaite's Tommy Christopher once took McCain to task for appearing to excuse date rape when, in a blog post, McCain wrote about promiscuity among women: "Listen up, sweetheart: You buy the ticket, you take the ride." After indignation broke out among both liberal and conservative defenders of women, Christopher confronted McCain on-camera at the CPAC conference in March 2011, seeking clarity. McCain conceded the point, explained why he had been skeptical of a widely publicized date-rape accusation (against Julian Assange) and repeated after Christopher: "No means no; stop means stop." Writing about this encounter, Christopher remarked that "McCain still holds many opinions that I find objectionable, but I also think that [the video] places the 'character' that is RS McCain into a context that simply reading him does not."

References

External links

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