Things John McCain On SNL Will Get More Coverage Than

Tonight, in half an hour, John McCain will cameo on the finale of this season's SNL, in a show hosted by The Office's Steve Carrell. It's already gotten a lot of pre-buzz, and you can bet that it will be covered across the board after it happens, as these cameos are (cf. Clinton, Obama). McCain will probably be likable and funny, and, if they're all feeling daring, they'll throw an appeasement joke in there (memo to "Weekend Update" joke writers: Do not hold back). Probably there will be some furious debate over who SNL is supporting, as is the custom. But taking a step back, I'm going to guess that McCain on SNL will get more attention and coverage than the following:

• The NYTimes story about how he's been using his wife's corporate plane for his campaign using a slightly dodgy campaign finance carve-out
  
• What kind of judges McCain would appoint to the Supreme Court, and what their agenda might be (hint: To overturn Roe v. Wade, for starters)
  
• Who pays for Meghan McCain and the McCain Blogette team? Per the AP, "'McCain Blogette' is independent from the campaign. So independent, the campaign said it could not answer who pays for Meghan and her two friends to travel on campaign planes and buses."
  
• What, exactly, in the John Hagee oeuvre (Catholicism as "Great Whore," women with PMS as Dobermans/terrorists, Katrina as punishment for a Gay Pride parade in New Orleans, having a 'slave sale') does McCain support, and how, exactly, he thinks Hagee "supports what I stand for and believe in."
  
• McCain's sudden claims to environmentalism vs. his record of skipping "every one of the 15 votes that the League of Conservation Voters deemed critical measures for the environment, including votes where the Arizona Senator's yea would have meant passage by a single-vote margin," according to the Daily Green (via C&L).
  
• Whether the media has overblown his foreign policy acumen and leadership, given his repeated foreign policy gaffes.

Just a few nuggets to chew on in the coming weeks — this is the last SNL of the season, after all.

Comments

[comatoast]

10:12 AM on 05/19/2008

Rachel, you have brightened my day considerab­ly by using your formidable talent and this forum to enumerate various questionab­le activities associated with the McCain campaign. Thanks for shining a light on the stuff under the rug (and radar).

[PioneerKing]

07:42 PM on 05/18/2008

BTW McCain's buddies in the main stream media have completly ignored the fact that the McCains have thrown their brown skinned adopted daughter under the bus so that McCain could court "agents of intolerenc­e." The McCains are the worst type of political opportunis­t.

[goodog]

09:06 PM on 05/18/2008

Well, they DID report the facts of the matter, but they left it up to us to judge the vile quality of it all.

[goodog]

06:49 PM on 05/18/2008

At least they didn't use then in place of than.

I've seen the columnists trip on that one enough times to make this one look typical.

Eat the press, indeed. The way it cramps your tongue when you read it out loud, I'm not sure I've ever had it happen before now.

But maybe we're just being old fogies, resistant to a new and undiscover­ed form, the evolution of writing. Maybe it's risky and new, but the dangling conjunctio­n will be HOT!

Why, maybe even our old readable way of writing will someday be something this style will get more passing grades than!

[StillAmused]

02:56 PM on 05/18/2008

Can anyone identify the language the headline is in which?

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" -- G. W. Bush

[goodog]

06:53 PM on 05/18/2008

Better this than "then!"

[Kundera]

12:49 PM on 05/18/2008

Yeah, it's a real secret what kind of judges he will appoint??? Are you serious? He talks about that all the time. The problem with you is that appointing conservati­ve judges is a bad thing whereas for most Americans that's a good thing. He's not hiding it.

[gopSTEALSyourTAXmoney]

01:08 PM on 05/18/2008

You always post junk and lies!

[JadedAggie]

04:36 PM on 05/18/2008

Polling shows the majority of the public believes the Supreme Court has become too conservati­ve. Obviously the cure for the Supreme Court being too conservati­ve would not be the appointmen­t of more conservati­ve judges.

[cynicalidealist]

12:35 PM on 05/18/2008

Yes. You need a headline editor. Yours scrambled my brain.

But: Good points all. SNL has its mission: do political satire and be timely. John McCain, as we saw, has his own. He did a bit of jujitsu: "I'm old - wanna make something of it?"

I say we PUSH the McCain lobbyist ties (earmarks are simply trivial); using Cindy McCain's furtive finances as a way to shield expenses; FEC; symbiotic relationsh­ip to Bush.

-CI

[JulieSA]

03:01 PM on 05/18/2008

McCain doesn't do earmarks, ever, and he sponsors legislatio­n against them. Obama is one the biggest porksters in the Senate, so no, you probably don't want to mention earmarks.

[Mij13]

05:30 PM on 05/18/2008

McSame. He's flip flopped on everything that matters. Obama is a strong, honest candidate who will not continue the mistakes of the past eight years. McSame has said clearly that he would.

[robeson]

12:07 PM on 05/18/2008

Exactly, MSM must stay away from McCain policy at all costs to promote this Bush III candidate.

[axt113]

11:38 AM on 05/18/2008

McCain's 2013 Budget deficit will be 780 Billion
http://thi­nkprogress­.org/wonkr­oom/2008/0­5/16/mccai­n-2013-def­icit/

[likeicare]

11:36 AM on 05/18/2008

Is it just me, or does the title make no sense?

McSame's desperate -- and SNL can't save him.

[Rachel Sklar]

03:47 PM on 05/18/2008

No, you're right, the title is reaching. I tried different permutatio­ns and that was the one that felt rightest to me, insofar as the word "rightest" sounds okay. Just to let you know what you're dealing with.

[rbdc]

04:13 PM on 05/18/2008

Ha! Is this Canglish?

[lynchcheney]

04:43 PM on 05/18/2008

How bout: "Things that will receive less coverage than John McCain on SNL."

[goodog]

07:00 PM on 05/18/2008

Yours is a sentence that theirs makes less sense than!

[rbdc]

08:25 PM on 05/18/2008

Boooorrrrr­rring! I confess I like Rachel's wording better. And her reply to the comment is the bestest ever.

[Drewkowski]

11:21 AM on 05/18/2008

Come on "my friends," haven't you yet realized that the media is the demographi­c McCain can count on most in this election? They are his "base." Hillary has the white working class and women after menopause, Obama has the young and the smart (or "elites" as the Republican­s call people with brains, instead of using it to refer to those with money and power), and McCain has those who own, write and report for corporate media conglomera­tes.

The media would benefit most from a McCain presidency if profits are the greatest measure, as he would never think of increasing and would likely decrease any regulation­s... not to mention give them another paper-sell­ing war to write about. So, to get him there, they will keep spinning him like a "maverick" who can play ball on both sides of the fence.

Well, it was all an act, and still is. Such ambition, as has John McCain, makes for a mighty black soul. So... you have someone willing to do or say anything in this desperate time to get elected, and the gatekeeper­s giving him a free pass on every screwup while they give the black guy the 3rd degree for not wearing a pin.

If the people fall for it again this time, then God won't need to damn America. The knee-slapp­in', bah-bull thumpin', Jeebus-pra­yin' hicks-from­-the-heart­land will have done the deed for him in the voting booth.

[JulieSA]

02:57 PM on 05/18/2008

"...women after menopause"

"The knee-slapp­in', bah-bull thumpin', Jeebus-pra­yin' hicks-from­-the-heart­land will have done the deed for him in the voting booth."

I thought you Obama supporters were told to cut out the snobbery, or else Obama has little chance of winning the swing states. I guess you didn't get the memo.

[rbdc]

08:36 AM on 05/18/2008

Although not today but soon enough, these subjects will be covered -- hopefully. With respect to the last question though, it's not helpful that HRC has already given him a pass on the foreign policy SAT exam, Commander-­in-Chief sub-sectio­n.