John McCain Has Left the Room

And entered into his just reward, aka The Void. 

Insert boilerplate hagiography here:







  John McCain made the supreme final sacrifice and clung onto life until the very end of the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard seasons, so that the well-rested Ruling Establishment can all gather for one of this year's premier social events - his "full dress" funeral at Washington's National Cathedral. No need to interrupt their vacations or even waste their waning beach days on their eulogies, because these were all efficiently and professionally written long before McCain's demise.

He was such a selfless hero, in fact, that he even seemed to schedule death for the precise anniversary of Senate colleague Ted Kennedy's demise nine years ago. These men were so bipartisan they even shared the same disease. This coincidence has already taken on the status of miracle in Corporate Media World. Bipartisanship is not only neoliberal pro-capitalist propaganda, it has expanded itself right down to the deeply cellular level, and is probably even a sub-atomic particle. 

Margaret Thatcher, who herself was elevated to centrist sainthood by the media-political complex upon her passing, was only touching the tip of the sadistic iceberg when she proclaimed that "there is no alternative" to the rich sucking the life out of the poor. The rich are not like you and me. They literally control life and when they're on their own death-beds, they're not dying like other people and gasping for air. They have nobly decided to "discontinue medical treatment."

The McCain funeral promises to be every bit as over-the-top bipartisan and self-congratulatory a spectacle as Kennedy's and every bit as air-kissingly schmoozey as Tim Russert's. I am hoping against hope that when Michelle Obama gives George W. Bush another one of her carefully choreographed redeeming hugs, it will be presented by the Corporate Media Borg as a split-screen image showing a scowling Donald Trump playing golf. That way, the professional Mourning Class can bask in the glow of their bipartisan superiority and cry their crocodile tears like the reptiles they are.

Make no mistake. They'll be plastering on the hagiographic excess the same way that John McCain once accused wife Cindy of plastering on the makeup "like a trollop, you Samantha Bee word!"  

Yes. They are all Samantha Bee words, every last war-mongering, money-worshipping one of them. They are feckless dealers in death who save their greatest sorrows for their fellow purveyors of death, destruction, and violence.

So let us all join Hillary Clinton in raising a glass to her good drinking buddy John as he tumbles into The Void. Because no matter how hard we might try, the Celebration of His Life will be unavoidable for the better part of this coming week. It probably won't be as bad as Ronald Reagan's sendoff, but it will be bad nonetheless.

It comes as no surprise that Hillary's own spontaneously calibrated outpouring of grief for McCain was centered around booze. The woman who drowned her electoral loss sorrows in numerous glasses of Chardonnay even made a special (and obviously pre-recorded) cable TV guest appearance on the Morning After of the void-entering to reminisce about downing vodka shots with John McCain as part of a drinking contest in Estonia.

 Why not? Bragging about her bipartisan alcoholic prowess was one of her main campaign themes to show how authentically and bipartisanly barbaric she is. It was a real feather in her cap when McCain (a never-Trumper till the end, except the parts about giving him money for war and staying mute about the tax breaks to billionaires) obligingly called her "One of The Guys." Hillary saw McCain's  masculinization of her as one of the high points of her career.

As a matter of fact, NBC's "Meet the Press" made the hawkish Clinton-McCain friendship one of the highlights in what can only be the first of many fond remembrances. One clip showed (who else) Tim Russert interviewing John and Hillary in 2006 and as much as endorsing one another for president.

Typical of the alcoholic sub-genre of The Narrative is the glowing piece on the CNN website, in which the consumption of booze becomes the hallmark of a patriot. The prose is as purple as the facial spider veins of late-stage cirrhosis:

 Both politicians managed four shots of vodka; the rules were unclear, but Hillary -- McCain's one-time political rival -- was declared the winner, according to the restaurant proprietor (though in her own account, Clinton said they "agreed to withdraw in honorable fashion," rather than name a winner). 

 That image sums up the humanity and character of the late Senator McCain, who will be mourned deeply on both sides of the political aisle. He embodied a more moderate brand of conservatism -- one that could separate politics and friendship -- that now feels distant and very much missed.

No wonder America is going down the tubes. Not only, as Shakespeare noted, is Hell empty and all the devils here. We are being ruled and regaled by a bunch of drunken incestuous neocon neoliberal reptiles who simply refuse to die even when they're dead. 

Calling the Bipartisan Shots Against the Backdrop of Predatory Capitalism