What Have We Done to Deserve Meghan McCain?

[catbyte]

Note: My sentiments exactly.

By Jacob Bacharach

I cannot bring myself to hate Meghan McCain. What would be the point? She is the natural endpoint of a giddily vacuous celebrity culture, a sort-of famous person who plays a sort-of famous person on TV. She frequently says stupid and hateful things, but they always seem uncalculated, and she is endlessly surprised to find that people disagree with her. (One suspects that the household staff never did, and now that she’s wandered off the compound and into public life, she can’t quite seem to grasp that not everyone is a family retainer.) Like most privileged mediocrities, her sense of moral conviction is perfectly befuddled.

McCain is one of the hosts of the beloved kitchen background noise generator, “The View,” where she has been known to pound the table and yell, “I’m John McCain’s daughter,” as though she were there for any other reason. John McCain, you may recall, was a famously corrupt senator who reinvented himself as a “maverick” by very occasionally bucking his party’s line and by very frequently flattering reporters. Upon his death last year, he was hailed as a moral hero for having personally disliked Donald Trump. Meghan McCain also personally dislikes Trump and often compares him unfavorably to “my father, John McCain.”

As is the case with all two dozen or so remaining “Never Trump” conservatives, Meghan’s natural audience is the national media. There is no other actual constituency for these beliefs. Anyone who rejects what Trump stands for must reject American conservativism as a whole, because he is its apotheosis: crude, atavistic, vengeful, unlettered, greedy, racist and mean. The “Never Trump” tendency just rejects the crudity, in principle ostensibly, but in reality simply for the practical reason that his transparency about the conservative political project constitutes a dangerous form of honesty.

Meghan McCain ostentatiously rejects the very prospect that “John McCain’s daughter” could be racist, although she is married to a man, Ben Domenech, whose also-ran conservative content farm literally aggregated stories into a “black crime” vertical. It’s hard to imagine that McCain ever actually read The Federalist—or much of anything, for that matter—so it’s probably reasonable to accept a plea of ignorance here. As is the norm in America, her ability to consider the existence of racism is limited to considerations of whether or not any particular individual is a racist. Generally, she assumes they are not. The very word is “the worst thing you can call anyone,” she contends, especially if that person happens to be a Republican.

snip

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/what-have-we-done-to-deserve-meghan-mccain/

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

McCain has internalized the popular conservative jujitsu of flipping accusations of racism by declaring that leftists are the real racists. This is how she stumbled tuchis-first into the manufactured Ilhan Omar controversy, turning a relatively calm discussion between several of her television co-hosts about the appropriate limits of criticizing Israel into a weepy soliloquy about how deeply felt the issue is to her, personal friend of Joe and Hadassah Lieberman, a Baptist woman who “probably verge[s] on being a Zionist as well.” It was plain that she very nearly said “Jewish.”

Every Jew knows at least one of these people, who think that because they went to your bar mitzvah and watched a lot of “Seinfeld,” they are practically Jewish themselves. McCain’s self-anointed ersatz Jewishness then squared itself when the Jewish satirical comic artist, Eli Valley, drew her as one of his classic grotesques: cartoon Meghan proclaiming her own self-anointed ersatz Jewishness! It was, McCain said, “one of the most anti-Semitic things I have ever seen.” Oy gevalt!

[Sherman A1]

2. She does not bother me a bit

I don’t watch whatever program she is on or much TV at all.

[2naSalit]

3. K&R

[walkingman]

4. Just another reality TV star - who cares?

[RussellCattle]

6. It's painful to see the word "reality" associated with her.....

....but your characterization is spot on. Famous for being famous. And loud.

[walkingman]

11. Right On!! Actually famous becuase of her father. She is simply exploiting the dumbasses for money.

[PoliticAverse]

5. You tune in to watch her apparently, that's what. n/t

[RussellCattle]

7. Not really. Her lack of any redeeming human attributes on the show...

...are adequately reported elsewhere, including here on DU.

[treestar]

14. People might like the others on it

I love the description “kitchen background noise generator “

[Control-Z]

18. I liked that too.

My personal "kitchen background noise generator" is MSNBC's morning programming. I can barely tolerate their am lineup but as background noise it works ok.

[awesomerwb1]

8. Short answer:

You tune in.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. Yep. The celebrity culture.

I find that by not even owning a TV (I watch my share of shows on various streaming services, so I'm not completely deprived) and by not watching such nonsense as the many talk shows, by not having TV news on all day, by not giving a flying fuck about some group of housewives in some city or some family that has its own "reality" show, I'm far better informed than most people I know.

Not to mention, I read books.

Lots of books.

[Wellstone ruled]

10. Just more of the Corporate Media

lousy Infotainment peddled as a source of factual information.

[Takket]

12. She claims to hate drumpf yet plays into the same BS persecution complex

That the GOP pushed to get drumpf elected. Two sides of the same coin

[EveHammond13]

13. the pain she has endured has taught her almost zero lessons about humanity

a remarkable achievement

self-entitled self-absorbed brat.

[kimbutgar]

15. She thinks she is the smartest person and she is the dumbest

She is the authority in what Democrats think!! She is fricking crazy and the only reason she’s on the View is because of her last name. She would not even have a job on Fox if she wasn’t McCain’s daughter. She brings nothing to the View but her stubborn ignorance.

I can’t wait for the day she gets fired.

[tblue37]

20. Nothing else? You forget her loud mouth and her remarkable rudeness. nt

[kimbutgar]

21. That's a given!!!!

[Submariner]

16. The same thing we've done to deserve Mika Brzezinski

We considered each of their father's as political kingpins on the world stage, and we've ended up with their tag along kids using Dad's surname to ride the road to some sort of prominence.

I do not find that either of them has an inspiring mind in political circles, just ho hum individuals.

[RussellCattle]

19. Zbigniew Brzezinski !!! I feel extra dumb that I never made the connection.

I liked Zbiggie. Smarter than Kissinger, one tenth the ego and possessing an actual soul.

[yonder]

17. Thanks, cb. Great, well-written article IMO. Jacob Bacarach is now on my radar. nt