SilentPatriot first called our attention to this yesterday and we just couldn't figure this out. At a Vets for Freedom rally outside on the Capitol steps, VFF Vice Chairman and Iraq vet SSgt David Bellavia introduced John McCain to speak to the veterans before he joined the Senate Armed Services hearing with Petraeus and Crocker. Bellavia took the opportunity to apparently try to take a shot at Obama:

Rest assured, that men like Sen. McCain will be the goal and the men that my two young boys will emulate and admire. [sic] You can have your Tiger Woods, we’ve got Sen. McCain. [..] My friends, this is the real ‘audacity of hope.’

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The only thing that SilentPatriot and I could come up with is that it's a vaguely racial comment, although it's unclear how being multi-racial (which both Woods and Obama are) is somehow a bad thing. Guest Michael Eric Dyson isn't sure the intent, but thinks that any way you slice it, it doesn't reflect well on Bellavia, nor McCain, who did not react to the statement at all:

DYSON: Now we can’t discern the person’s intent, it may have been fine. But that’s even more problematic. If there was no specific and particular and conscious intent to do harm, that means that this grows out of a pattern of habit. That it is just a natural reflex. And that one, you know, interchangeable African-American multi-racial person is as good as the other or they’re indistinguishable.

Kind of like how those Sunnis and Shi'as are indistinguishable, right, McCain? But the thing I kept coming back to is that as an insult, it clearly backfires onto McCain, given the stature and achievements of Tiger Woods, something that Keith Olbermann states perfectly:

Since I first heard this today, I’ve been trying to figure out, with some sports background in my past, if the veteran there was not talking about race, what he could have been talking about. Because what is there to be dismissive about about Tiger Woods? He’s an almost unbeatable golfer. He is, in fact, the man who re-calibrated what had been a very non-diverse sport and because of that re-calibration, everybody in it made a lot more money than they would have otherwise. He brought people a lot of green, never mind any other color. If you’re comparing anybody to Tiger Woods on a non-racial basis, the other guy loses, doesn’t he?

Well, here's hoping, Keith. I just think it's hilarious that the GOP proves once again to be so incompetent that they even screw up insults.