Lindsey Graham, reverse ferret: how John McCain's spaniel became Trump's poodle

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/11/lindsey-graham-reverse-ferret-john-mccain-trump

That Lindsey Graham would become Donald Trump’s poodle was not a tale (or tail) foretold. But it has landed him in the dogfight of his life for re-election to his Senate seat in South Carolina, challenged by a relentless and capable Democratic candidate, Jaime Harrison, who methodically chased Graham around the ring in their debate, repeatedly jabbing him as a hypocrite, until he struck him with a haymaker, ending the verbal fisticuffs with a TKO: “Be a man.”

Bruised and battered, Graham retreated to his corner, Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, to beg: “I’m getting overwhelmed … help me, they’re killing me money-wise. Help me.”

Graham has climbed the greasy pole within the Senate, to a position that historically has been rewarded by his state with a lifetime tenure. He succeeded to the seat that Strom Thurmond held for 48 years before he died at 100. From Graham’s chairmanship of the Senate judiciary committee he has taken up the defense of Trump, to unmask the dastardly conspiracy of “Obamagate” and to handle the confirmation of a justice on the supreme court, to pack it with a conservative majority for a generation to come. But just at this consummate moment of his career, events have conspired to dissolve his facade and expose his flagrant hypocrisy. His presumed strength has turned into his vulnerability. Worse, in Washington, where the press has treated him for more than 20 years like the genial star of the comedy club, he has become an object of ridicule.

In British political discourse, a figure like Graham would be described with the seemingly enigmatic phrase of “reverse ferret”, applied to a politician who takes a dramatic and often contorted U-turn. According to the classic work Lying, by Sissela Bok, the word “hypocrisy” has its origins in Greek theater, as the slanted reply of an actor to the action on the stage. “Its present meaning is: the assumption of a false appearance of virtue or goodness, with dissimulation of real characters or inclinations.” The hypocrite deceives in order to be perceived as virtuous. His dishonesty is in the service of an image of honesty.

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[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. #1 Ass-kisser and Golf Caddy....

Notice how orange-lipped Lady G is.

Snap your fingers, Lady G!

[Thomas Hurt]

2. You know for all their talk about rugged individualism and personal responsibility....

christofascists are surely a bunch of servile, groveling lackeys.

[Doodley]

3. Lindsey Graham isn't man enough to be his own man.

[beachbumbob]

4. If ever Graham could lose an election, this will be the one

and its all about the GOTV in SC

[The Genealogist]

5. I don't think of him in canine terms, but rather as a leech

A bloated, mindless leech, with lips attached firmly to a giant orange ass.

[UTUSN]

6. "Stinkball" was his name as a kid, hmmm... (ex-)senator Stinkball has a nice ring!1

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.... ...he has evolved from hypocrisy to hypocrisy while remaining remarkably the same underlying person he was as an attention-seeking little boy. In 2015, he self-published a short memoir about his early life. He described spending much of his time in the bar his father owned, the Sanitary Café, trying to entertain the white working-class men who frequented it.

“But when the place started to fill in and liven up, I would get my act going,” he wrote. “I would strut around the place, sometimes dressed as a cowboy – hat, vest and plastic six shooters. I might get up on the bar and walk up and down it while talking to folks. When customers went to the restroom, I might steal their beer and chug it. I might smoke their cigarette, too, if they left it burning in the ashtray. Those were antics that earned me the nickname, ‘Stinkball’, which everyone in the bar except my parents called me.” ....

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