Add "civil rights movement" to the growing list

...of things John McCain apparently doesn't know very much about.

On his opposition to a holiday honoring Martin Luther King:

McCain: I voted in my first year in congress against it. Then I began to learn. And I studied. And people talked to me. And I not only supported it, but I fought very hard in my own state of Arizona for recognition against a governor who was of my own party.

...

Reporter: What didn't you know when you voted initially against it that you later knew when you changed your mind?

McCain: I had not really been involved in the issue. I just had not had a lot of experience with the issue. That's all.

McCain: In Arizona, I came from the military where we are the greatest equal opportunity employer in the nation and still are. And I had just not been involved in the issue. There were issues that I had not been involved in when I was in the military, and then I went relatively quickly to being a member of Congress.

Reporter: You just didn't realize the large role in American history?

McCain: I think I just explained it about best I could.

Reporter: It's not really an issue to be involved in, to be aware of his impact on this country, it's more of a knowledge of history.

McCain: I think you're entitled to your opinion on it and I respect your opinion on that, but I had not been involved in the issue. I had come from being in the military to running for Congress in a state that did not have a large African American population.

He wasn't "involved" in the "issue?"

What a positively bizarre formulation.

How exactly does a (at the time) nearly 50 year-old man not have enough "involvement" with the activities of Martin Luther King Jr. to recognize the role and influence he had? If that's actually the case, it's a far more damning bit of information than his initial opposition to the holiday ever could be. This man wants us to believe that he is the best choice to lead this nation. Can we really afford to entrust that position to someone who, seemingly, has that much difficulty grasping the significance of such major events?

The MLK holiday, alone, literally took him a decade or more to puzzle out, in part, because there wasn't a large enough African American population in Arizona for him to see the significance it held.

Incredible.

Maybe if he'd had Chuck, here, to 'splain it to him...