Do cameramen count?

Original photo by DoubleSpeak

Well, it looks like there are a couple of pro-McCain narratives brewing, one obvious, one maybe not-quite-as-obvious. The obvious one is that yeah, Senator McCain has a temper, but that's actually a good thing:

Some depict McCain... as an erratic hothead incapable of staying cool in the face of what he views as either disloyalty to him or irrational opposition to his ideas. Others praise a firebrand who is resolute against the forces of greed and gutlessness.

"Does he get angry? Yes," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who supports McCain's presidential bid. "But it's never been enough to blur his judgment. . . . If anything, his passion and occasional bursts of anger have made him more effective."

(...)

...McCain declared that voters occasionally want him to vent: "When I see corruption, . . . when I see people misbehaving badly, they expect me to" be angry.

You see? John McCain is simply a very passionate man, who cannot contain his righteous fury at waste, corruption, and bad behavior. You know, like when his wife makes comments about his hair, or a fellow Congressman takes exception to being called "boy," that sort of thing. But this last quote from the WaPo story is my favorite, and segues neatly into the less-obvious narrative:

"You will damn well do this. You will make this a holiday. You're making us look like fools," he privately exploded two decades ago at a stunned group of Arizona Republicans who opposed creating a state holiday in remembrance of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

That's right, McCain was outraged by resistance to a Martin Luther King holiday - although, it should be noted, that he seems more exercised by the optics rather than any moral obligation to give a great American his due.

And now there's this:

[McCain] began the day with remarks at a landmark of the U.S. civil rights movement, the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where armed Alabama police attacked more than 500 civil rights demonstrators on March 7, 1965, a day known as "Bloody Sunday."

(...)

McCain spoke highly of Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis -- an Obama supporter -- who took part in the Selma march and was beaten by police.

Not to mention McCain's appearance at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis where King was shot, where he attempted to apologize for his original opposition to MLK Day, with mixed results.

It sure looks like McCain and his handlers (and probably the media) are making a concerted effort to establish his totally-not-a-racist bona fides, doesn't it? I think McCain's campaign has calculated that Obama is the likely Democratic nominee, so they must therefore inoculate their guy against charges of race-baiting when the anti-Obama attacks inevitably slide into the gutter.

Am I saying McCain is a racist? Honestly, I don't know, although his past opposition to MLK Day is not encouraging. But I will be frankly shocked if we don't see a whole bunch of smudgy flyers, mysterious robocalls, and shady push polls insinuating that Obama is a black separatist Muslim crack dealer - "Do we really know where his loyalties lie?", that sort of thing. McCain may not be a racist, but his campaign and his party are going to pander to them all the same. And he's going to let them.

You know, just to be on the safe side, McCain should probably try to find a running mate with some genuine civil rights bona fides. Someone who was a Freedom Rider, maybe. Preferably one who shared his love of war, but surely it would be impossible to find such a person...