Sundays are becoming one of my favorite days of the week. In college, I always had that feeling of "I should be doing some work or something." I don't think much work really ever got done on Sundays, but the guilt was there. Now, all I have to do is watch sports, clean the apartment and read the Sunday NYT. I love the Sunday NYT. It takes me all day to read and the magazine lasts me the week. Frank Rich writes on Sundays and I get a reprise of Maureen Dowd's crazies. It also includes my favorite NYT section: Week in Review. Week in Review is pithy and smart. It takes all the confusion of the week and helps to put into focus what is important about it all. It's also usually very funny.
This Sunday's Week in Review included a short article that addressed something I had been thinking about a lot recently but hadn't gotten around the research. It's the McCain campaign's favorite word: maverick. John Schwartz traces the term "maverick" to a particular "family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s." Basically, the article goes on to explain how the term "maverick" was coined after the Maverick family, who had a long history of not branding their cattle and standing up for people who didn't have voices in society.
Even if you set aside the fact that the Maverick family has championed progressive ideas for centuries, something the McCain campaign most certainly does not, I think the most backwards part about McCain's overuse of "maverick" is that he and Sarah Palin have made it a label--exactly the opposite of what Samuel Augustus Maverick was known for. When you start calling yourself a maverick over and over, as McCain and Palin are apt to do, you are branding yourself. It's inauthentic, at best. More on this later.
This Sunday's Week in Review included a short article that addressed something I had been thinking about a lot recently but hadn't gotten around the research. It's the McCain campaign's favorite word: maverick. John Schwartz traces the term "maverick" to a particular "family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s." Basically, the article goes on to explain how the term "maverick" was coined after the Maverick family, who had a long history of not branding their cattle and standing up for people who didn't have voices in society.
Even if you set aside the fact that the Maverick family has championed progressive ideas for centuries, something the McCain campaign most certainly does not, I think the most backwards part about McCain's overuse of "maverick" is that he and Sarah Palin have made it a label--exactly the opposite of what Samuel Augustus Maverick was known for. When you start calling yourself a maverick over and over, as McCain and Palin are apt to do, you are branding yourself. It's inauthentic, at best. More on this later.
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