For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow 1

I’m prepared to fight for this fake snow, damn it. Media hype aside, John McCain was always a self-important blowhard. But didn’t he used to care a little bit about substantial issues—and even once sponsor climate legislation in defiance of an oil-satuarated White House?

As Grist’s Jon Hiskes recently pointed out, McCain has completely crumbled on the issue of climate change since his resounding defeat last year. Now that climate legislation actually has a chance to pass—albeit in a deplorably diluted state—McCain has taken to mumbling Palinesque denialist platitudes.

So what is it that gets the great man’s notorious ire up these days? What makes him rage and fume,  thunder and roar?

The right of a private company to generate fake snow on an Arizona mountaintop. On national park land, in a spot considered sacred by Native Americans.

The ironies are almost too intense to ponder in this holiday time. A man who once championed action to avert disastrous planetary warning now sticks his neck out in defense of burning fossil fuel to generate fake snow on public land—in defiance of Native Americans.

I always thought McCain, with his short fuse, right-wing politics, and (puzzling) ability to charm reporters, was a disaster waiting to happen. Now he’s morphed into grotesque self-caricature.

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