Straight Up | Jan Herman

I've been calling him the Gasbag, but Thomas Frank has come up with another description for him -- the best I've read anywhere: John McCain is "a hood ornament on a hit-and-run machine."

Frank writes in his weekly Wall Street Journal column:

The man no longer stands for anything. He has transformed himself from a maverick into a cipher, a hood ornament on a hit-and-run machine. He has no more political content now than the constantly changing cast of cynical right-wingers aboard his campaign plane.

Did the Hood Ornament ever stand for anything? I don't think so, unless it was the BananaRepublic. Was he ever a maverick? McMaverick is more like it. But never mind. The headline on Frank's column — "The Audacity of Nope" — deserves a tip of the hat, too.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Aug. 12 — Did someone say war profiteers? Check out the top 25 and this private army.

The Gasbag's latest McBullshit gets a review called "Changing Lanes" from Elizabeth Kolbert in this week's New Yorker. She notes that "he's opted out of truth altogether." Really. As if the hype for his so-called "straight-talking days" was ever credible in the first place.

I've been waiting for Q&A to post a transcript of the Chris Hedges interview on Sunday night. But it's been two days already. Nada. So click the link and watch the video. It's stunning. [Aug. 12 — Finally, the posted transcript.]

The reason for the interview is publication of his latest book, "Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians," but he talks about many other subjects as well with the kind of moral insight rarely heard on television.

Hedges laments the decline of the mainstream press, points out that elite TV journalists (the late sainted Tim Russert not excepted) are mere courtiers to the political establishment, and speaks of the reason for his departure from The New York Times.

He describes our democratic system as corrupted ("We live in a corporate state." [It's] "a coup d'état in slow motion.") and the election campaign as deeply flawed ("You can't run for president of this country unless you allow yourself to become a commercialized product.").

Asked whom he'll vote for, he says, "I'm going to vote for Nader. Part of it is a moral issue. I can't vote for anybody who doesn't call for an immediate end to the war in Iraq."

What makes the interview so striking is not that Hedges's beliefs are unique. Many others have expressed them -- Gore Vidal, for one, and perhaps with greater brilliance. It is his willingness to act on those beliefs at no little cost that makes Hedges are rare one.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

See this.

Postscript: July 30 -- The Gasbag Express, aka the Low-Road Express? Of course. As today's NYT editorial notes, "...it is hard to imagine a worse role model than the one Mr. McCain seems to be adopting: President Bush." (Objection: seems?) Which brings our Calvin Trillin out of the Straight Up woodwork.

BUSH'S PRESIDENTIAL PRAYER

Hear me, O Father, in my need,
I am universally cursed;
Fix the election, make McCain succeed
So I'll no longer be reckoned the worst.

-- Leon Freilich

(The S/U staff apologizes deeply for referring to the BananaRepublic's lameduck Bullshitter-in-Chief by name.)