Performances You Can Trust
In an e-mail message, the journalist Jack Hitt sums up what it has all come down to: McCain, especially at his most folksy and sincere, now delivers a perfect impersonation of Dana Carvey impersonating John McCain.
That is no small trick, my friends. To believe as deeply as McCain does that he is sincere at this point requires a truly bottomless capacity for self-delusion. And that makes neo-con Field Marshall Wilhelm von Kristol McCain's perfect handler, for Kristol now resembles Carvey impersonating an un-American subversive posing as a genial pundit named Bill Kristol.
Yes, the two of them (or is it the three of them?) have truly come to deserve each other. But does anyone else deserve them? Unfortunately, as P.T. Barnum and H.L. Mencken reminded us, there's one born every minute.
We need for the sun to rise and catch all these Vampyres out of their coffins for once...
October 16, 2008 10:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
C4, I liked your old avatar, why did you change it?
October 16, 2008 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, after the rebirth of TPM, my old avatar was destroyed, and I could not find it so I figured I needed a new vessel to inhabit. :-)
October 16, 2008 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
c4,
after the switch to the new server my avatar was resurrected but only 50% made it through, as you can see.
October 16, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's kind of eerie, like flotsam from a shipwreck...
October 16, 2008 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
c4,
my little sailor boy avatar was taken when I was about 5, it seems to have suffered a partial birth abortion when they switched servers.
This new one was taken when I got out of the Army in late 1945 ....Christ, was I ever that young?
October 16, 2008 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
John, are you a WWII vet? Which theatre?
October 16, 2008 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
c4,
ETO with the 82nd. I jumped into Normandy, Holland, fought in the Bulge, crossed the Rhine near Cologne, helped liberate the concentration camp at Woebblin near Ludwigslust, and ended it at the Elbe where Gavin took the surrender of the German 21st Army. I was in one month short of 4 years.
October 17, 2008 8:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I watched McCain's face as Obama made an articulate, intelligent, insightful answer to the questions by Schieffer and/or charges by McCain.
As Obama went on, McCain's expressions were of a man in pain.
October 16, 2008 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
He has an immense disdain for intellect. Which explains a lot about his VP pick.
October 16, 2008 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Carol,
that's why I call him McBush.
October 16, 2008 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
He's a 'Man of Action'. That's why he always claims he knows what to 'do'. But Indiana Jones was much more than a 'Man of Action'. He was also a man of physical prowess, and a man of words, and a man of profound spiritual knowledge. A 'Man of Action' who has never cultivated their other faculties is an 'Incomplete Man'.
October 16, 2008 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
c4,
McCain seems to think everyone who disagrees with him is wrong, which implies that he's always right.
There was an instance a month or so ago when he said how he disagreed with the economists on some issue; "they're wrong, they're wrong, they're wrong." he said.
October 16, 2008 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you disagree with BIG John McCain, you must be killed. No judge, no jury, just taken out and shot.
October 16, 2008 1:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
It kills me when he says that. He knows what to do. Okay - what would that be? And if you know how we should respond to these problems we've been struggling with for many years, why have you not shared that extraordinary secret and ensured that it was implemented?
October 16, 2008 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, if he 'knows' what to do, then why hasn't he 'done' it, already.
He's a 'gonna' kind of a guy. AZ is too close to Mexico. Mañana. He's going to do it Mañana.
October 16, 2008 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
"MCCAIN: OK. But it's very clear that I have disagreed with the Bush administration. I have disagreed with leaders of my own party. I've got the scars to prove it. "
When McCain said this he gestured to his broken shoulders somehow equating his POW status with arguments over policy with Bushco?
Another desperate attempt to remind us of who he REALLY is?
The decent into self parody is only too apt.
October 16, 2008 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Huh. That's funny, because I thought McCain was trying to do Travis Bickle.
October 16, 2008 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
You talkin ta me?
October 16, 2008 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
McCain just comes across like he is trying to talk us into something, while Obama comes across as as straight a shooter as you could get from a politician. McCain accused Obama of being just an "eloquence" act, but how can that argument fly in the face of reality?
I suppose the GOP is cheering about the Joe Plumber cheap shot, but I don't think one low blow is enough to win the fight by any real margin.
October 16, 2008 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I found McCain to be especially creepy last night with his rapid eye blinking and his tongue slithering in and out and the sound he made when it happened. He seriously creeped me out.
October 16, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink