Chapomatic

I do not use the word lightly. Others will say this better, but this is from the heart.

I was in boot camp in Illinois in 1986. We were mooshed up in a room and someone put a TV on, and Admiral James Bond Stockdale’s picture was flashed up.

The courage…no, the stoicism, the sheer endurance the man had has inspired me to this day. I was saddened when he was on the presidential debates and didn’t have the telegenic skills of the others–people didn’t know.

Via a comment on Fark:

From Dennis Miller:

“Now I know (Stockdale’s name has) become a buzzword in this culture for doddering old man, but let’s look at the record, folks. The guy was the first guy in and the last guy out of Vietnam, a war that many Americans, including our present President, did not want to dirty their hands with. The reason he had to turn his hearing aid on at that debate is because those f***ing animals knocked his eardrums out when he wouldn’t spill his guts. He teaches philosophy at Stanford University, he’s a brilliant, sensitive, courageous man. And yet he committed the one unpardonable sin in our culture: he was bad on television.”

Admiral Stockdale has passed on. Rest in peace, sir.