WaPo Columnist: John McCain, Far Right Extremist

This is where the mainstream media has been headed ever since the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate; E. J. Dionne is the latest journalist to claim that any and all criticism of Obama is by definition racist. But he takes it an extra step, saying that John McCain represents the reemergence of the far right.

Yes, really. John McCain, far right extremist. Wow. Meanwhile, Barack Obama associates with people who scream “God damn America,” and with people who are guilty of bombing the US Capitol, and gets a complete pass.

Are we witnessing the reemergence of the far right as a power in American politics? Has John McCain, inadvertently perhaps, become the midwife of a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger?

McCain has clearly become uneasy with some of the forces that have gathered around him. He has begun to insist, against the sometimes loud protests from his crowds, that Barack Obama is, among things, a “decent person.”

Yet McCain’s own campaign is playing with powerful extremist themes to denigrate Obama. When his running mate, Sarah Palin, first brought up Obama’s association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers, who has become a centerpiece of McCain’s attacks, she accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” What other “terrorists” was she thinking about?

Since Obama was a child when Ayers was part of the Weather Underground, and since even Republicans have served on boards with Ayers, this is classic guilt by association.

Notice how many mainstream journalists shamelessly parrot Obama’s talking points about William Ayers, word for word.

(Hat tip:Nacy)

The Atlantic’s McCain Cover

Gerard Vanderleun posts about some quite amazing perfidy from The Atlantic and photographer Jill Greenberg, whose photo shoot with John McCain was deliberately set up to produce ominous, threatening pictures—by using outright trickery: Out-Takes: Behind The Atlantic’s McCain Cover.

At Photo District News, there’s an article with more details, and Greenberg’s own words about this disgraceful episode: PDNPulse: How Jill Greenberg Really Feels About John McCain.

When The Atlantic called Jill Greenberg, a committed Democrat, to shoot a portrait of John McCain for its October cover, she rubbed her hands with glee.

She delivered the image the magazine asked for—a shot that makes the Republican presidential nominee look heroic. Greenberg is well known for her highly retouched images of bears and crying babies. But she didn’t bother to do much retouching on her McCain images. “I left his eyes red and his skin looking bad,” she says.

After getting that shot, Greenberg asked McCain to “please come over here” for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. “That’s what he thought he was being lit by,” Greenberg says. “But that wasn’t firing.”

What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. “He had no idea he was being lit from below,” Greenberg says. And his handlers didn’t seem to notice it either. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she adds.

(Hat tip:Charlie Manson the LGF Cult leader)

McCain Sets ‘Em Up, Knocks ‘Em Down

Maybe I’m cynical, but I can’t help suspecting that the Obama campaign was set up by John McCain’s self-deprecating statements about not “getting” the Internet. Here’s a Forbes article from 2000, and it’s clear that McCain is nowhere near as clueless as Obama would like to portray him: Forbes.com – Net Vs. Norm.

In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. “She’s a whiz on the keyboard, and I’m so laborious,” McCain admits.

If it was a setup, Obama fell right into the trap.

(Hat tip: Jim Geraghty and Chas@LGF)

SC Dem Chair Brings the Ugly

The word that best sums this one up is “classy.” S.C. Dem chair: Palin primary qualification is she hasn’t had an abortion.

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate “whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”  …

Told of McCain’s boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: ”Just anecdotally, I believe that those white women are Republican women anyway.”

(Hat tip:The Man no one likes)