Fascinoma

In Faith of Our Fathers John McCain wrote (or at least "approved") this passage, apropos his flip-flop on the Confederate Flag Issue:

"I had not just been dishonest. I had been a coward, and I had severed my own interests from my country's. That was what made the lie unforgivable. All my heroes, fictional and real, would have been ashamed of me. "

He has said some other pretty harsh, and sincere-sounding things about himself and the "mistakes" he's made, like getting into bed with arch-criminal Charles Keating. But it occurs to me now that, like most incorrigibles, McCain has mastered the rhetoric of contrition, indeed it's a deeply ingrained part of his MO, like the tearful remorse of the wife beater, like the soul-searching the convict does in "group". But this kind of talk has little or nothing to do with his actual behavior in the future, no predictive value whatsoever. At some point people who are taken in by it, have only themselves to blame.

Everybody should read this fine debunking piece in Rolling Stone about Petulant Princeling II.