Sunday, December 30, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I Am Legend of 28 Days Later
Some say the surest sign that McCain is a front-runner again is that his events are so crowded that they have to be pooled. Some say that it's that "it feels like 2000 again." I say it's that people are jumping all over his quirky sense of humor and unexpected set of cultural references. Today, the McCain-o-phobes are faux-chin-stroking over his invocation of "I Am Legend":
"I've been declared dead in this campaign on five or six occasions. I won't refer to a recent movie I saw, but I think I am legend," he told reporters, referring to the film in which Will Smith stars as the last man on Earth.
At least it's a cut above "Battlefield Earth."
(I've long believed that the Venn diagram of political junkies/indie rock fans/baseball nuts/sci-fi fanboys would be just about circular. What they have in common: controlled alternate universes that reward obsessive list-keeping and don't penalize lack of social skills....)
UPDATE: Oh and this:
Asked how he intended to respond [to a Mitt Romney attack], the Arizona Republican said: "Never get into a wrestling match with a pig. You both get dirty -- and the pig likes it."
Which is a, uhm, non-story, and a joke that goes back to Lincoln. McCain's problem has never been that he tells jokes, it's that he re-tells them. And re-tells them. And re-tells them...
About Swampland
Joe Klein is TIME's political columnist and author of six books, most recently Politics Lost. His weekly TIME column, "In the Arena," covers national and international affairs. In 2004 he won the National Headliner Award for best magazine column. Read more
Senior Writer Karen Tumulty has been TIME's National Political Correspondent since 2001, and has also covered the White House and Congress for the magazine. A native of San Antonio, she is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard Business School, where her career choice has significantly lowered the average salary of her graduating class. But she gets lots of free magazines. Read more
Jay Newton-Small Jay Newton-Small covers politics for TIME. She has covered the Bush 43 White House and also Congress from the DeLay era to the present. And, yes, despite the misleading name SHE is a she. Read more
Michael Scherer is a correspondent in TIME's Washington bureau covering the 2008 presidential campaign. He has worked national assignments for Mother Jones magazine and Salon.com. Read more
Amy Sullivan is a senior editor at TIME magazine, and author of the book The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap (Scribner, 2008). A Michigan native, she holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Harvard Divinity School. She writes about religion and politics for TIME, but no longer answers to the name "Bible Girl." Read more
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