The media's moment of disillusionment with John McCain appears to be at hand. Even Joe Klein has finally noticed that McCain's profile is beginning to resemble the endomorphic shadow of his backstage advisor, Karl Rove, not one of the faces on Mt. Rushmore. It's all very predictable - about as predictable as the media's abrupt discovery in the summer of 2005, as New Orleans sank beneath the waves, that the president of the United States was, gasp!, an incompetent boob. But anyone who's studied McCain's career with any intellectual detachment at all (as opposed to the hagiographic tendencies of his media cheerleading claque) could have told you: The truth about John McCain is that he'll do just about anything and say just about anything to win. He always has. He's just been more clever (and cynical) than most in how he goes about it.
The media's moment of disillusionment with John McCain appears to be at hand. Even Joe Klein has finally noticed that McCain's profile is beginning to resemble the endomorphic shadow of his backstage advisor, Karl Rove, not one of the faces on Mt. Rushmore.
It's all very predictable - about as predictable as the media's abrupt discovery in the summer of 2005, as New Orleans sank beneath the waves, that the president of the United States was, gasp!, an incompetent boob.
But anyone who's studied McCain's career with any intellectual detachment at all (as opposed to the hagiographic tendencies of his media cheerleading claque) could have told you: The truth about John McCain is that he'll do just about anything and say just about anything to win. He always has. He's just been more clever (and cynical) than most in how he goes about it.
Now if only Billmon were correct about the media realizing the truth. Alas, I think he's living in a fantasy.
Joke Line is annoying as all hell, but, deep down, he has a soul. He's misguided and naive, not evil, and so he can self-correct when the truth becomes sufficiently obvious.
But I'm afraid Joke Line is the rare breed of mere fuck-up in an establishment that is a lot more like the ever-cynical John McCain than he. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Saying that on a couple of US blogs four years ago got me my nick.
That healing gift is what McCain, at his best, brings to the presidential race -- not the brass marching band of military valor but the tolerance of someone who has truly suffered. It's evident in his achievements as a senator: He had been tortured himself, so he campaigned, against intense pressure from the Bush administration, for a ban on torture; he had been caught as one of the "Keating Five" in a sleazy campaign finance scandal, so he defied his party and became a crusader for campaign finance and ethics reforms. What's damaging the McCain campaign now, I suspect, is that this fiercely independent man is trying to please other people -- especially a Republican leadership that doesn't really trust him. He should give that up and be the person whose voice shines through the pages of his life story.
That healing gift is what McCain, at his best, brings to the presidential race -- not the brass marching band of military valor but the tolerance of someone who has truly suffered. It's evident in his achievements as a senator: He had been tortured himself, so he campaigned, against intense pressure from the Bush administration, for a ban on torture; he had been caught as one of the "Keating Five" in a sleazy campaign finance scandal, so he defied his party and became a crusader for campaign finance and ethics reforms.
What's damaging the McCain campaign now, I suspect, is that this fiercely independent man is trying to please other people -- especially a Republican leadership that doesn't really trust him. He should give that up and be the person whose voice shines through the pages of his life story.
You're never going to get decent coverage as long as these idiots keep believing in the myth.
Ignatius isn't even the worst of it. I expect that from the incompent hacks at the WaPo, because they're Very Serious and work for the big Beltway rag. But then you've got skanks like Norah O'Donnell and Iraq 4Evah pro-Israel hacks like Blitzer. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Good to see Billmon, really.
Daily Kos: First time as tragedy, second time as farce
In Hersh's most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The "meeting took place in the Vice-President's office. `The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,'" according to one of Hersh's sources.
