Straight Up |: August 2008 Archives

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)

Postscript: Sept. 4 -- And Sarah Palin is the Dashboard Jesus.

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.