10.04.08
John McCain and the myth of “the Maverick”
Or, putting the “icky” back in “Mavericky”
When I hear a story that is too good to be true, an unbelievable story, I tend not to believe it, just like when I went to that McCain rally as a Democratic mole and heard his fake POW story, the one he plagiarized out of a book and wrote himself into. And then there was the Solzhenitzen story he did the same with, and the Wikipedia article that ended up as his speech about the Georgia crisis…
I had heard rumblings about McCain as a pilot who had crashed multiple planes, a man with a nasty temper and a streak of vindictiveness that he saw as independence, stories about how he abandoned his first wife after she had a disfiguring accident, carried on an affair with a rich young heiress while still living with his wife, and even taking out a marriage license before his divorce became final.
But thanks to Rolling Stone Magazine, we have all the pieces put together in a long, sordid narrative of the life of John McCain.
I’ve always said that getting captured and spending 5 years in prison camp may have been an honorable ordeal, but hardly an achievement. Well, it turns out that his life has been a series of events that could best be classified as “hardly an achievement”, yet he has managed to manufacture himself a myth of integrity, dignity, and all kinds of other positive traits that it seems he doesn’t possess.
Republicans are saying it’s not fair to tell the truth about their candidate. Live with it. It’s just truth.
