McBush: The Greatest American Hypocrite

How is Teresa Heinz not like Cindy McCain? Well, I seriously doubt Teresa's husband ever got away with calling her a c**t in public. Or in private, for that matter.

But the only real difference between these two extremely wealthy women who inherited their money from family members and who married men who later became presidential candidates is that Cindy's husband is a republican.

Which probably explains why the wingnut haters who screamed themselves hoarse in 2004 about what a gigolo John Kerry was for marrying a wealthy widow are conspicuously silent about John McCain's whoring for Cindy's beer money.

Somehow, the deep stupidity of our political discourse actually manages to escalate during presidential campaigns, becoming even more vapid and idiotic than normal. But, as I argued continuously when I did my book tour in April and May for Great American Hypocrites, this is the kind of campaign the GOP runs every election and in which they specialize, and there are only two options for Democrats in response: (1) purport to "rise above it" and thus ensure that they get slaughtered in a one-sided, one-way War of Personality Demonization which renders issues irrelevant (hence: the all-American Everyman War Hero versus the rich, out-of-touch, effete elitist), or (2) attack the GOP candidate using the same lowly character themes in order to neutralize the attacks and prevent the election from being decided on these grounds. It's good to see the Obama campaign, finally, engaging these issues aggressively. As I wrote in my book:

The reason why this has worked is that there are almost never any attacks on these myths, no aggressive examination of the real lives of these leaders. Critics of Republicans shy away from these themes. There is a squeamishness to use their own weapons against them. . . . It needs to be shoved into the media's faces and into our public discourse how false and deceitful and artificial are these "Republican Values" and personality attributes that they concoct for themselves. To do that, the most prominent right-wing political leaders need to be put under a microscope -- their actual lives and beliefs -- to show how lacking they really are in the virtues they claim to exude and revere.

There needs to be a lot more focus of this sort on John McCain's "character," given that, from now until November, no matter what Obama does, the Rovian disciples managing John McCain's candidacy will ensure his campaign is about little other than these sorts of slimy, personality-based, Freak Show attacks on Obama. It's what the GOP does and it's what the media is capable of disseminating.

Yes, no one nails the essential hypocrisy of both modern republicans and the village idiot "reporters" who worship them better than Glenn Greenwald.

Read his whole post on the gigolo hypocrisy, read him daily in Salon, and read his new book for the full skinny on McCain's hypocrisy.

Oh, there is one more way in which Teresa Heinz is not like Cindy McCain: unlike Cindy, Teresa was not having an illicit affair with a man cheating on his disfigured wife.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.