While Greg keeps wishing for liberal celebrities to spew inane thoughts, there ought to be prize for actor Matthew Modine, star of Full Metal Jacket a couple of decades ago. With the media focusing in on McCain’s speech tonight and the week’s focus on his heroic biography, Modine uncorked this rebuttal in Denver, as reported by the Washington Examiner:

“I mean, he got shot down three times!” said Modine, taking on one of McCain’s most lauded personal accomplishments. “That’s not success!” While on a bombing mission over North Vietnam, McCain was shot down and held as a prisoner of war. When McCain’s father was named commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, the future Arizona senator was offered an early release, but rejected it because his captors would not also released his fellow American P.O.W.s. That kind of loyalty has earned McCain endless accolades, but Modine thinks that McCain’s rejection of the release offer is yet another example of McCain’s shortcomings. “And he wasn’t even a good prisoner of war,” said Modine. “He should have left as soon as he could. That’s what you’re supposed to do as a prisoner of war: Leave when you can. It defeats the enemy. It makes them look bad and it weakens them.”

That’s rich enough. But an interview with the Boston Herald found a stunning contrast when the senator in question was Ted Kennedy:

And Matthew Modine, who played a sleazy preacher on Showtime’s “Weeds” last season, got positively sermonical when we asked him his thoughts on what could be the senior senator’s last hurrah.
“Our mistakes are what unite us,” he said. “And I’d much rather be judged by someone who’s slipped and fallen. So we’re not here to talk about someone who got drunk and got into a car accident because, there but for the grace of God and all that.
“But hopefully when we finally lay our head on that pillow and exhale and let go of this life we can say ‘I’ve lived a good life, I’ve been a good person,’ ” Modine said. “And I believe that when Ted Kennedy does finally exhale he will do it with joy and the knowledge that he’s lived a good life and was a very good senator for Massachusetts.”