Rolling Stone takes a hatchet to McCain's utterly false "maverick" image. The title sets up a clever double play, simultaneously discrediting the narrative and referencing McCain's increasingly childish behavior;

Make-Believe Maverick

A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty

Dishonest. That's almost calling him a liar. Robert Grossman's brilliant illustration reduces and captures the sad caricature that is quickly becoming the template. All the facts have been available public record since, well duh. But the corporate media isn't typically interested in facts. It's all about the narrative. Drill baby drill! Well this well is finally tapped. I'm coming around to the idea that the elite press has come to the simple conclusion that their money is simply safer under an Obama administration. But let's not discount the tremendous, tireless push back work that takes place in the blog-o-sphere and the terrific work done by real maverick journalists like Cliff Schecter and Brock and Waldman. Not to mention, McCain's own free-fall campaign has been its own worse enemy. Hearing Sara Palin go on and on about "a team of mavericks" just doesn't have that authentic "mavericky" feel now does it?

But the Washington Press Corps' willingness to accept this framework has been the glue that held this tall tale together. Neal Gabler's confessional in the Times last March, "The Maverick and the Media," revealed what political activists in the blogosphere have long seen as blatantly obvious;

IT is certainly no secret that Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is a darling of the news media. Reporters routinely attach “maverick,” “straight talker” and “patriot” to him like Homeric epithets. Chris Matthews of MSNBC has even called the press “McCain’s base” — a comment that Mr. McCain himself has jokingly reiterated. The mainstream news media by and large don’t cover Mr. McCain; they canonize him. Hence the moniker on liberal blogs: St. McCain.

Accompanying the Rolling Stone ten page article is a video titled, "Five Myths About John McCain" and two accompanying articles, The Double-Talk Express and Mad Dog Palin: The Full Story. Try puttin' lipstick on that.

Tim Dickenson's piece is particularly noteworthy because he starts out by challenging the keystone of the entire maverick mythology, McCain's POW experience in Vietnam. He begins with an encounter between McCain and another ex-POW, Air Force lieutenant colonel John Dramesi. Dickenson sets up the contrast between these two and their respective experiences as "an honor gap."

Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions.

He continues with a conversation between the two men which further draws into question why McCain has had a free pass all these years. Five years later McCain would leave his crippled wife for the young Beer heiress. Again, this information has always been available but the press has simply ignored it.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.

"Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Yeah, there's a guy putting country first. But it's not just Rolling Stone. On October 4 the NYT ran a story, "Who You Callin' a Maverick?" about a real maverick from my home town no less. What's key in this story is the (re)association (by the press that is) of liberalism with patriotism.

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

This was a local history I was unaware of and the "gobbledygook" was a funny bit of trivia. But I immediately recognized the meta-theme and so will you. This local San Antonio story can be seen as microcosm of the Republican reactionary war on Liberalism which took shape under the Nixon/Agnew "Southern Strategy:"

Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

Then there was John Heilemann's recent piece in New York Magazine which has been buzzing around the internet, "How McCain Lost His Brand: From maverick to crank in an instant."

As both a media figure and a human being, Matthews is sui generis—and yet what made his comments so remarkable was how unremarkable they were. In the past several weeks, the shift of press-corps sentiment against McCain has been stark and undeniable, even among heavies such as Matthews long accused by the left of being residents of the Arizonan’s amen corner. Jonathan Alter, Joe Klein, Richard Cohen, David Ignatius, Jacob Weisberg: all former McCain admirers now turned brutal critics. Equally if not more damaging, the shift has been just as pronounced, if less operatic, among straight-news reporters. Suddenly, McCain is no longer being portrayed as a straight-talking, truth-telling maverick but as a liar, a fraud, and an opportunist with acute anger-management issues.

It may be too early to claim contemporary conservatism has died as a hegemonic force in American public discourses. But after eight years of horrendous neo-conservative pillaging of the state, and thirty years of a Republican culture war, a renewed sense of a patriotic liberal spirit seems to be rushing in to the void. Or perhaps that's just my wishful thinking.

Illustration by Robert Grossman/ Rolling Stone