I’m trying to think about how to put this gently. You would think that after seeing John McCain’s metamorphosis from a “straight-talking” contrarian media darling into a bloodthirsty sociopath, the press would be too ashamed to use the term ‘maverick’ to describe anyone.
And if they’re not too ashamed to use the term, they should at least acknowledge that John McCain’s present status as the most violence-disposed person of his stature on the planet has changed the connotations of what the word ‘maverick‘ means.
You cannot apply it to someone with the meek demeanor of Lincoln Chafee without sounding like an idiot. Linc Chafee presents himself as the kind of man who would run shrieking from a spider in the bathroom, not as some kind of tough-guy cowboy with six-shooters on each hip. Chafee doesn’t crash military airplanes into Galveston Bay; he needs to be protected from loud noises.
This is also, by the way, the reason that he won’t excite progressives or anyone else looking for an alternative to Hillary Clinton.
Cue the Top Gun music.
A maverick is an unbranded cow, which in the early days of Texas would be claimed by one Samuel Maverick formerly of upstate South Carolina because that was his registered (or acknowledged) brand.
Now how does that fit any description of John McCain?
I’m just wondering if the beer ad revenue is what gets him on talk shows.
There are more reasons Chafee won’t excite progressives. I hope.
Well, two comments.
First, the most violence-disposed person of his stature on the planet is certainly an overstatement. Perhaps you could modify that to say “based on his public utterances”, but I don’t think we have to look far to find people who have actually initiated far more violence that McCain has proposed.
Second, regarding “Maverick”, we don’t hear that much anymore. I think his excited labeling of himself and Sarah Palin as a couple of Mavericks probably killed off that term for pundit use. As a word it’ll come back in a decade or so.
So, Al Giordano thinks Martin O’Malley can upset Clinton’s apple cart. Nice little essay. Even though Al Giordano is very talented and always interesting, he has been wrong a number of times, too, in a big way.