It's been quite a ride. They've been through a lot together over the years. And now it looks like they're ready to call it quits. John McCain and the New York Times are splitting up for good.
Or are they?
The romance caught everyone by surprise when it began back in 1999. John ditched his wife Cindy and hit the road for his nationwide "Straight Talk Express" tour. It seemed like a foolhardy midlife crisis stunt: the 63 year old McCain taking on the far bigger-budgeted, more heavily-sold (if disastrously derivative) George W. Bush "Compassionate Conservative" tour. But the whole McCain enterprise had a certain Indie grit about it. (Think Credence Clearwater Revival vs. Creed.) So groupies from every major news organization climbed aboard.
What was the attraction? Well...
1. McCain was charismatic – a lot sexier than Bush.
2. Guilt abatement: the groupie-reporters felt guilty for being the children of draft dodgers, employees of draft dodgers or draft dodgers themselves.
3. In the single greatest act of journalistic passive-aggressiveness, reporters lavished praise on Republican McCain as a way of diminishing Republican Bush, thus insulating themselves from the charge of liberal bias. (In retrospect they would have done us all a favor had they come out as lefties and demolished Bush.)
Whatever the reasons, the attraction was there. And the "Straight Talk Express" became one big candidate-reporter love-in. (Outsiders understood: "Don't Come a-knockin' when the Candidate's Straight-talkin'.") Extra chlorine for this pool of reporters, stat!
But to everyone's surprise, the One he chose as his favorite – the Priscilla to his Elvis, the Lynda to his Paul, the Dale to his Roy – was the Grey Lady: the New York Times. He had known her during his days jamming with the Keating Five. Their relationship wasn't so hot then. But this time it was different.
She soon washed that grey right out of her hair, confirming what everyone suspected: they were in love. She wrote him love notes, calling him "The Maverick." He gave her "full access". All the other groupie-reporters, lacking imagination or personality or an actual budget, copied her style. But they were mere clones.
She stood by him in South Carolina, when the tour went, well, south – only weeks before John hung it up and went back to the Senate and Cindy.
The afterglow of the "Straight Talk" tour lingered, though. The two regularly met and hooked up, out of their minds on Campaign Finance Reform. (I must confess, I've tried CFR and it's just incredibly ... boring.)
But then the relationship started to get screwy. John started to make decisions that she didn't like – like supporting the Iraq War. She decided that his personality had changed, that he'd lost his cred, and she started to pull back.
Then she heard something devastating:
he was seeing a lobbyist. She felt betrayed. But she wasn't going to lash out. Instead she wrote
a long, long, long letter – so long, in fact, that he found out before she'd finished writing it. So he went public with
his version of events first – his "He Said" trumping her "She Said."
You would've thought that would be the end of them – except that she ended up
endorsing him for the GOP nomination during the primaries! A romantic rekindling? Or was this just breakup sex?
Whatever it was, it didn't last. When he ended up committing himself to the mysteriously orange-colored Sarah Palin, it was war. (Seriously, the Grey Lady may be old but that chick from Alaska is orange.) And so she ripped into Palin, apparently rendering her mute. (Has Palin lost her voice? Or is she just being ladylike refusing to respond?)
So now McCain has served her with divorce papers –
a letter last week from Steve Schmidt lashing out at the Grey Lady's alleged pattern of behavior. Weird, considering they'd
rendezvoused only 24 hours before for another "full access" interview.
What explains this co-dependency? Are they using each other: McCain trashing the Times to appeal to his new groupies? The Grey Lady relishing her position, as the One that can still make him nuts – the Ava Gardner to his Sinatra?
Or are they both just a little crazy?
