Straight talk

Besides talking politics, another thing I don't do often on Restricted View is post clips from The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, because everybody else is already doing that... and once I got started I'd probably never do anything else. But today over at HuffPo's Eat the Press blog, Rachel Sklar (who does post clips from the aforementioned shows quite often) flashed back to a piece The Daily Show ran in 1999, when John McCain first launched the Straight Talk Express.

Back then, I admired McCain. He actually seemed to be an honorable man, or at least as close as a lifelong politician can be to "honorable." I might have voted for him, given the chance; I certainly wouldn't have minded seeing him get the GOP nomination. At many points during this campaign, but especially during the last couple weeks, I've found myself reflecting ruefully on what could have been, and how far we've come since 2000. If McCain had any claim to "honor" left at the start of the month... Well, it's a lost cause now, isn't it. Just the last couple days I've been wondering, What will be left of him by November?

All the more reason to flash back to 1999! Besides giving us a glimpse of McCain at that time, this clip is a chance to look back at TDS when Jon Stewart was younger and more absurdly coiffed, and Steve Carrell was a correspondent. (Oh my, the Carrell-Colbert days were the glory days, weren't they?) Oh, and Cindy McCain looked much better back then -- Jon's hair looks silly, but Cindy's is great.