IT was 5:30; I was lying in bed reading while my Poor Wife watched MSNBC, having already heard the local weather six times in the previous thirty minutes, and the BREAKING NEWS video of the blazing US embassy caught the corner of my eye. I propped myself up on an elbow to watch. At the end of it the hairdo read a statement from John McCain moderately deploring the violence and urging all people of goodwill to start acting like NATO runs the world before HE HAS TO TURN THIS CAR AROUND, You Hear Me? 'Cause he will.
Typically, I'm wondering what th' hell John McCain is doing in the story, but then the hairdo says something to the effect that McCain must welcome the opportunity to talk about something other that the day's other Big Breaking News. There is no way I could make this stuff up.
"What's that about?" asks the PW.
"I have no idea," I said.
And I didn't, and they returned to their coverage of the Big Breaking News Allegedly Involving an Unnamed McCain Appendage, a story from the front page of the Times, and I told her I must not have read the Times. So when I roused myself enough to go downstairs I checked in on it, and found to my surprise that I had read the Times, or skimmed it, and the Hot McCain on Lobbyist Action was there under the headline:
For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk
Which, I think you'll agree, falls somewhere short of Selling the Sizzle. Just like Evel Knievel fell somewhat short of jumping that canyon. The first time around I'd figured it was some sort of campaign eyeglass-stem-chewer designed to balance coverage of a Democratic race which still includes candidates people want to vote for. So I read the article, belatedly, and the first thing that comes to mind is that they should have translated the dirty parts into Latin.
(For those of you under seventy-five, they used to do that in learned journals so that only educated people could read them for the dirty parts.)
My father will admit to you that he never changed a diaper in his life. He's no macho posturer; it's merely a testament to what gender roles were a mere half-century ago. Plus when you see him tell it you notice he has some difficulty to this day in not vomiting at the mere thought. The modern Timesman finds himself with the same visceral reaction, apparently, but forced to take a couple of good lungfuls regardless:
Self-confidence on ethics! How many hours were spent in the stifling environs of the word smithy to forge that gate topper? We remind ourselves that someone wrote that headline, went home, and did not stick his head in the oven.
We remind you: these are the people who are supposed to be covering thetorture scandal enhanced interrogation techniques story.
Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened...So, they were just humping like seasoned-up rodents in a squalid alley, I guess. It's sad to see that romance is dead even among the older generation.
Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship....
By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic...
Mr. McCain said that the relationship was not romantic.
Self-confidence on ethics! How many hours were spent in the stifling environs of the word smithy to forge that gate topper? We remind ourselves that someone wrote that headline, went home, and did not stick his head in the oven.
We remind you: these are the people who are supposed to be covering the
In a sense, hearing the unceasing bloviations about that "story" did feel like torture, so at least things are close.
ReplyDeleteThey knew about the story 4 months ago and endorsed him anyway.
ReplyDelete"Aluminum tubes."
ReplyDelete'Nuff said.
"McCain Relationship Goes Nuclear - Hard as an 'aluminum tube', aide reports"
ReplyDeleteThe part that annoys me is that The Times exposed itself to a lot of semi-justified criticism on the affair stuff (which IS kinda thin) when they could have made hay by focusing just on the seamy facts of influence peddling and St. John cozying up to lobbyists with campaign contributions and jet planes. The Washington Post ran an article yesterday that focused effectively on that and ran another one today on St. John the Lobbyists' Scourge surrounding himself with lobbyists in his own campaign. Sometimes the Times strikes me as the gang that couldn't shoot straight.
ReplyDeleteIt was just a bad idea to go with the story in that form. I'm fairly sure that there must have been something they had that the intervention of lawyers made them too nervous to use - maybe even rightly - but if they couldn't use it they should have just dropped that aspect of the story, or at least dropped it out of the lede.
ReplyDeleteHappily, the rest of the papers seem to have been holding off like dieters at a birthday party not wanting to be the one who takes the first piece and ruins the pretty cake, and have come up almost instantaneously with a flood of stories on the same subject which omit the blond lady angle.
Which was a stupid angle to go with anyway even if they were trying to hurt him. Everyone knows perfectly well how his first marriage ended, and his party's primary voters, those family values ombudsmen of the body politic, gave him the win when freaking Ron Paul had more money to get his message out. They don't care.
And if they don't care, after twenty years of watching the country go down the toilet because we were all too busy worrying about the marital fidelity of people on the other side everybody else is far too burned out to care.
We remind ourselves that someone wrote that headline, went home, and did not stick his head in the oven.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone kill themselves that way anymore?