McCain's Aversion to Jangling Keys

A YouTube video went a little viral today (h/t Paddy).

The videographer, Joeyess, has disabled the embed feature so I can't post it here. But how's this for an idea - a whole bunch of people at the DNC get a keyrings filled with keys to represent each of John McCain's houses that he forgets he owns. And then they start jingling those keyrings everytime McCain's name gets mentioned at the convention. It would be payback for the Republican conventioneers in 2004 who sported purple bandaids mocking Kerry's war injuries and subsequent Purple Heart.

Sounds cute and maybe a little dumb. The DailyKos diary for this hit the rec list and the diarist was linked to by Atrios, TPM and PM's own contributor from Americablog, John Amato.

There's just ONE small problem. From Salon discussing the release of McCain's medical records in May:

There are behaviors associated with the candidate that would be consistent with a diagnosis of PTSD. Author Robert Timberg mentions McCain's intense explosions of anger --- a hallmark sign of lingering mental trauma from war -- in his book "John McCain: An American Odyssey." Timberg describes the episodes as "an eruption of temper out of all proportion to the provocation." Timberg, who McCain has said "knows more about me than I do," wrote that McCain's sudden fury is a result of Vietnam coming "back to haunt him." McCain has himself described having an adverse reaction to the sound of jangling keys, which reminds him of his Vietnam jailers. McCain also told doctors that during solitary confinement he had strayed pretty "far out" and had referred to himself as "mentally deteriorating."

(italics and bold mine)

So any attempt to pull off this little stunt, if it even takes off, would surely be perceived to be mocking a POW's PSTD. But then again, how many people know that the Senator suffers from PSTD? That's a little disturbing and not much reported.

To be fair to "Joeyess" he was unaware when he made this video and posted it on Kos and got linked to by blog superstars, that McCain has a jangling key issue.

And to be fair to Senator McCain - no matter how viral this gets or how fun it seems - Convention Dems - don't do it. It's a lose-lose.

But maybe someone can look into this PTSD thing a little more?