And THIS guy is trying to paint BARACK OBAMA as the elitist??

As if it weren't bad enough that the McCains, like a pair of desert Leona Helmsleys, believe that only the little people pay taxes, it seems that last week John McCain did his best impression of George Herbert Walker Bush when the latter expressed amazement over a supermarket scanner:

John McCain kind of stepped in it the other day, here in California, but luckily no one noticed. He was being driven from John Wayne airport to a fundraiser, and he took a quick call from Martin Wisckol of the Orange County Register. Wisckol asked him a series of softball questions so tedious McCain's driver had to crack the window so the breeze would keep him from passing out, but then this:

WISCKOL: I'd like to ask you a couple questions suggested by voters here. They're not reporter-type questions.

McCAIN: Sure. It'd be a pleasure.

WISCKOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost? 


McCAIN: Oh, I don't remember. Now there's Secret Service protection. But I've done it for many, many years. I don't recall and frankly, I don't see how it matters. I've had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.

But hey, he is "aware of the people" in the same way he is "aware of the internet" (and presumably its traditions), so that makes it all OK. That his campaign staff does the Google for him because he doesn't know how to use a computer (something even my 81-year-old mother does) and that the Secret Service pumps gas for him and that he paid $273,144 in 2007 in wages for his household staff is immaterial. He's just like the rest of us, while the black guy who was the son of a single mother and who went to college on scholarships and who's married to a woman whose father was a blue collar worker who went to work every despite having multiple sclerosis is the elitist.

In the same world where Chris Matthews and the late Tim Russert were just regular guys despite that their social lives all took place within Beltway circles and George W. Bush was a roughhewn Texas rancher instead of the Spoiled Brat of Kennebunkport. You know, that world of pure imagination: