Verbing John McCain

John McCain has done a remarkable job over the years portraying himself as a maverick, an outsider, and more recently, the Reasonable Republican. Of course when standing next to the likes of Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul, and just about anyone from the Bush administration, it's hard not to look a little reasonable. In that context, even Blackbeard the Pirate might look reasonable.

Alexander Cockburn, whose column sometimes aggravates me in The Nation, recently wrote one called, "Less Whining, More Dirt!" I'd been wondering about this Cindy McCain, the trophy that occasionally stands behind John and rolls her eyes when she agrees with his sarcasm. And although I knew she wasn't his first wife, I'd never heard what the McCain first marriage was all about. Well, Cockburn writes:

What about McCain's first wife, Carol, a plucky woman who kept the home fires burning all those years, raising the kids alone while John was in the Hanoi Hilton? She was very seriously injured in an auto accident, then dumped in 1980 by the war hero, shortly after he had started an affair with the 25-year-old Arizona beer heiress and then used her money to start his political career. McCain's defenders say he had separated from Carol by the time he took up with Cindy. A detailed story by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times in 2000 demolished this. A senior Republican lobbyist told me only the other day that there are people on the Hill who still won't forgive McCain for his treatment of Carol.

Oh, John, that's a dick move.

But I bet we all know stories--maybe in our own lives--of one person giving up on a relationship or marriage because things just got a little too hard. Or perhaps we know people who've dumped one person because the alternative was so much more advantageous to a career.

Dear B&E readers, it's time we start calling this what it is: John-McCaining. Here are a few sample sentences:

But by the time the meds kicked in, she'd already John-McCained him.

She was barren, so he John-McCained her and shacked up with that baby machine.

He was spending all his time in the gym, so naturally, when he found a buffer version of his current boyfriend, he John-McCained the fat schlub.

I think you probably get the proper usage now.

Go forth, dear B&E readers, and verb John McCain!