The Press Corps' Unshakeable Crush on McCain

If you pay even passing attention to national politics, you know that presumptive GOP presidential candidate John McCain is a maverick who bucks his own party's line and never wavers in his political beliefs. At least, that's what the corporate media say—reality tells a very different story. A candidate could only get away with such an elaborate and long-running con with the media as willing accomplices. "The press loves McCain," explained NBC host Chris Matthews (9/10/06). "We're his base." For much of the press, the early stages of the 2008 presidential campaign were a chance to fall in love all over again. "Those of us on the Straight Talk Express eight years ago got a breathtaking journalistic opportunity: to be inside the lively mind and heart of a leading contender for president," Newsweek's Howard Fineman recalled (3/3/08). "McCain was as joyously combative as Popeye and as earnestly confessional as Oprah." Fineman was actually restrained when compared to some of the coverage from eight years prior. "I know it shouldn't be happening, but it is," wrote Charles Lane in the New Republic (10/18/99). "I'm falling for John McCain." Lane's confession was in turn surpassed in awkwardness by another writer in the same magazine: Michael Lewis (9/30/96) declared that his feelings for McCain were like "the war that must occur inside a 14-year-old boy who discovers he is more sexually attracted to boys than to girls."
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