Fascinoma

So, Saint John McCain gets called by the New York Times for letting a young blonde lobbyist cozy up to him and extract a number of favors for her client. It seems the senator's then staff, perhaps noting the eerie resemblance to his similarly blonde, similarly younger wife, thought there migth be some hanky-panky going on, and not wishing to see their gravy train take a detour into Gary Hartsville, they shooed her off. Now, maybe he wasn't boning her; maybe he was just getting into bed politically with her Christofascist client Paxson -- maybe he was doing both. In any case, the sex part will be hard to prove or disprove now.

But the big media outlets have really put on the GOP kneepads to bring down a story that threatened to rear its ugly head -- so to speak. Even The News Hour led off with McCain's lengthy and carefully crafted statement, the announcer announcing that St. John had "rebutted" the story. Of course his rebuttal sounded mighty weasely on the no-favors-for-lobbyists score, and like a non-denial on the schtupping issue. But elsewhere in the Dumbosphere the story seems to be about how suspicious the timing of the story is, how thin, how nefarious the librul-slanting New York Times is. This would be the Librul New York Times that sat on the illegal wiretapping story for a year, until after the Presidential election, at Karl Rove's request. And that megaphoned the Bushie's call for the Iraq war faithfully. (Thanks again Judy Miller!)

We should maybe agree that the employers of William Kristol run a much shittier paper than they used to, and perhaps also that the problem with this sort of story is much like the use of bootleg antibiotics on your super-VD or your resistant TB -- it just makles the affliction more resistant. You need the maximum full course of broad-spectrum pesticides to finally take out a Republicker these days. Preferably with boy-fucking video, cancelled checks to the pertinent Scoutmaster, bullet-proiof indictment and actual plea-bargain, et cetera, otherwise people like Jim Lehrer will give them a pass. Just ask Larry Craig.

But speaking of slutting around, let us not forget that during the time when St. John was being schmoozed up by and doing favors for said blonde lobbyist and her Christofascist client, he was also trying to get Bill Clinton impeached for besmirching the Dress Blues of the Nation. And speaking of journalists' GOP kneepads how about this lovely headlince from the Washington Post Style section : Cindy McCain: A Quiet Strength -- This Time Around, The Candidate's Wife Is Confidently Reserved.

The story below the headline's exercise in analingus is a bit snarkier, perhaps because the Brownshirts favored by the Post these days as editors can't really grasp subtlety. In it we learn a nice bit about Cindy. For instance, she and McCain hooked up when he was still married, although "according to some accounts separated" ( read: coughbullshit!cough); she was 24 and he was 42 but they "both lied" about their ages so it was all mathematically, morally, anatomically and romantically complimentary. And it was understandable, seeing as he she was a "former rodeo queen" and the daughter of a rich beer distributor, and that John had been locked away for a long time. What it wasn't -- given that Mccain was running around, as was his habit then, on the woman who'd waited for him all those years while he was in prison camp -- is classy or honorable. Not very honorable either is the way Cindy reportedly lied to St. John about her taste for prescription pain-killers and her tendency to steal those painkiller by the jar -- the very mention of which seems to be a "smear". (Just ask Rush Limbaugh.) But worse, spooky even, is what the last line of the story says about the Fembot by St. John's side, "I keep a long list, you know, I have a grudge list," McCain said at the spouses' forum. Then she spoke of her husband. "He's taught me to leave my grudge list behind and give forgiveness."

Great, just what we need: another crazy-eyed, overmedicated Stepford Fury, a rodeo queen with all the cosmopolitan, cultured flair of a Holiday Inn or a regional airport, as First Lady. Cindy McBeth! Does anyone else find her very pictures frightening -- or is it just me? If I were Ms. Iseman, I'd be afraid, very afraid of a McCain Presidency.