John McCain succumbs to the Dark Side of the Force
Jonathan Chait has a funny editorial in the Los Angeles Times about a recent statement by Senator Lindsey Graham regarding fellow Republican senator and presidential hopeful John McCain: “This is not Luke Skywalker here.”
As Chait adroitly observes:
- “Graham was looking for a way to reassure his fellow conservatives they they no longer had anything to fear from McCain. His choice of metaphor is one of those windows into the fundamental cultural gap that separates hard-core conservatives from the rest of humanity. To most people, who think of Luke Skywalker as the hero battling an evil and immensely powerful empire, Graham’s implication would be seen as an unmitigated insult. In the world of the GOP elite, though, it’s a form of praise: No, no, don’t worry, McCain’s with the empire now.”
Chait goes on to point out that McCain used to style himself as the maverick rebel fighting the entrenched empire of the GOP. By succumbing to the force he used to claim he was fighting, Chait concludes, McCain ended up resembling not Luke Skywalker but Darth Vader.
