Surprise! The Recipe is Not Original
This isn’t really intended to criticize Cindy McCain – God knows the woman has suffered enough from 30 years of marriage to John McCain – but rather to dissect the puff profile Holly Bailey concocted for Newsweek June 21, “In Search of Cindy McCain.”
In her often risible attempts to slab on sugar frosting over the rocky-road history of John McCain and his second wife Cindy, Ms. Bailey, a young Corporate Media go-getter plainly anxious to avoid ruffling any powerful feathers, instead leaves gaping cracks through which the careful reader can detect glimmers of harsh reality, rendered as it is by the leaden hand of an ardent, if inexpert, propagandist.
For those of us who relish chuckling at such obvious kiss-up buncombe, here are just a few of the more entertaining highlights, but read the article for the full head-slapping impact:
– Without an ounce of shame or regret, Ms. Bailey persists in inserting flag-waving quotes from Mrs. McCain which sound as if they were invented by McCain’s campaign staff. To explain her “long-distance marriage” and “together but apart” relationship to political animal Johnny, Holly has Cindy comparing Mr. McCain going to Washington with a Navy officer’s deployment overseas: “It was almost like a deployment …What I told the kids from the time they were little is that their dad was deployed and serving our country in Washington.” She followed that selfless patriotic tearjerker with Mrs. Sen. McCain admitting that when she married her husband, she knew that he would “put country first” before his bride and kids. Rather than the portrait of a dedicated pol with his nose to the grindstone in Congress that Ms. Bailey tried to etch, one could also take from this that John McCain didn’t much care for his wife or children, and preferred staying alone in Washington to hanging out at home with the whole damn family.
– Ms. Bailey also notes that exemplary Good Citizen John somehow didn’t notice his wife was addicted to both booze and painkillers for years “brought on in part by the stress of politics,” as Holly writes, but doesn’t think this angle is worthy of further pursuit. Cindy herself is quoted, somewhat pathetically, as saying she’s her husband’s “best friend, best adviser and closest confidant” yet she neglected to tell him she was strung out on drugs and liquor, so apparently that relationship didn’t cut both ways. Just to review: Here is a man who seeks to be the president of one of the most powerful nations on earth, yet he is completely ignorant of what is happening to his wife right under his nose? Voters might care to know how that’s even possible unless it was willful, and if it was willful, how McCain could be that unfeeling and blind toward someone he supposedly loves? After all, his calling card is his love for his country – as president, would he refuse to face reality as it declines as well? Ah, but don’t rely on Ms. Bailey bring up any of those uncomfortable questions – she’s on a mission to fluff up the hair and apply cosmetics to her subject’s past, not commit any actual acts of journalism.
The Tattlesnake – Gramm Cracker of Dunder, Jesse’s Fake Thunder, and Obama’s FISA Blunder Edition
– An Early Xmas Present for Obama: They don’t come much dumber than former GOP Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, the UBS corporate shill who is the McCain campaign’s senior economic advisor, and he proved it July 10th by calling America “a nation of whiners” for complaining about the miserable state of the Bush Boy’s economy that he helped craft when he was in the senate. McCain quickly jetted away from Gramm’s remarks, denying they represented his opinion, but he notably didn’t fire the fifth Mutant Ninja Turtle from his campaign. Gramm, finally noticing he had wet his pants at the dance, attempted to back track, claiming desperately that he meant the leaders of the country, not the citizens, but think about it – how is that better? After all, isn’t McCain trumpeting himself as a leader of the country? He just called the War Hero he works for a whiner? I can see this line replayed on Dem oppo ads in the fall to show just how boneheaded and crass the Republicans really are. Crawl inside your shell, Phil, and hope they don’t roll you on your back before you arrive home in Stupidville.
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