Hypocrisy of John McCain

US midterms diary: John McCain's penthouse put-down

★ This has been, perhaps above all else, the election campaign in which hypocrisy became so audaciously unashamed that it seemed to lose all meaning as a concept. Is there still any point condemning a politician for not practising what they preach when the anti-establishment movement galvanising the American right is funded by unprecedented floods of establishment cash? So perhaps it's par for the course, as opposed to jaw-dislocatingly outrageous, to hear John McCain, campaigning in Nevada for the Tea Partier Sharron Angle, mock her opponent, Harry Reid, for – and please, make sure you're sitting down – residing in fancy apartments. On election day, McCain told the crowd: "We are going to kick Harry Reid out of his penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton and send him back to Searchlight!" The Tea Party: you thought it was a demagogic effort to protect the income of the wealthiest Americans by means of populist rabble-rousing. But was the whole thing really just concocted in the first place because the McCains have their eye on another fancy DC-area apartment to add to their collection?

★ On which topic, how playfully self-referential and knowingly ironic of Sarah Palin to condemn the media as "corrupt bastards" – referring specifically to a couple of Alaska TV journalists overheard joking about fake news stories involving her protege, Joe Miller – during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. That's the Fox News whose sister channel, Fox Business Network, has been running wall-to-wall coverage attacking a Californian ballot initiative that would slash corporate tax breaks. And all without mentioning, as the New York Times has just revealed, that its parent company, News International, has spent $1.3m so far in a lobbying effort to get it defeated. Shocking. I mean, not remotely shocking at all. But still. Shocking.

★ And speaking of populist demagogues, ABC News seems to be backtracking on its much-criticised decision to invite Andrew Breitbart, the questionably hinged conservative web eminence who helped make the Drudge Report what it is, to participate in its election-night coverage. Breitbart claims he'll be appearing as an analyst, but a statement from ABC distances the network from him with comical vigour. "Mr Breitbart is not an ABC News analyst," it explains. "He is not an ABC News consultant. He is not, in any way, affiliated with ABC News. He is not being paid by ABC News. He has not been asked to analyse the results of the election for ABC News. Mr Breitbart will not be a part of the ABC News broadcast coverage ... He has been invited as one of several guests." Just so we're clear.

★  Of all the 2010 election candidates you'd have thought might resist the urge to sell out, first place surely went to the New York gubernatorial hopeful and YouTube sensation Jimmy McMillan, of the Rent Is Too Damn High party, whose campaigning has focused exclusively on the topic of rent, and specifically his contention that its level is unacceptably elevated. Depressingly, McMillan is now endorsing an ad campaign for the online auction site BidHere.com, although even here he remains impressively on-message, promoting a wheeze in which users bid against each other to win a month's rent. The initiative is motivated, McMillan explains, by his conviction that the rent is too damn high. If he's now to make millions as a product endorser, that argument's going to start getting slightly less persuasive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/01/midterms-diary-mccain-reid-palin

Sarah Palin on our country. She's like a freakin Plague.