The sport of politics. The politics of sport.

John McCain has had quite a week and-a-half. You almost get the sense that what we’re witnessing is a decent guy prone to occasional senior moments, all the while surrounded by questionable company. Not a great cocktail for presidential victory, along with the whole staying-in-Iraq-until-the-next-millennium thing.

First, Mr. Anti-Special Interests had to face questions about an “improper” relationship — in more ways than one — with a blonde lobbyist. This was after the editors at the New York Times published a badly constructed “story” that seemed to have been patched together from a combination of innuendo, rumor and nebulousness leaked from McCain campaign “sources:” not exactly the stuff of hard journalism.

I still don’t know what the deal is with that story. I mean, is it a big deal, a business-as-usual deal for people in Congress (which would still suck but just not have news legs), or a relatively meaningless deal? I’ll bet more than a few folks at the Times are wondering too.

Then one of McCain’s campaign co-chairs in Arizona, Rep. Richard Renzi, was indicted on 35 counts including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and official extortion. (For some reason, that seems like a more important story than the blonde lobbyist thing.) I haven’t heard much about that since it broke. The Dems are probably stashing that story so they can whip it out during an opportune moment in the general election campaign.

More recently, some knuckleheads working for a local McCain campaign outfit in Ohio decided it was a good idea to have right-wing talk show host Bill Cunningham get rallygoers “fired up and ready to go” (to lift a standard chant at Barack Obama’s rallies) by calling Obama a Chicago-style political “hack” and emphasizing his middle name, “Hussein,” repeatedly in a naked bid to play the irrelevant Muslim — since Obama is a practicing Christian — card.

Looking at video of the rally, you have to wonder how many of the attendees making up the nearly all-white tapestry behind Cunningham found themselves feeling like assholes for sharing the stage with the guy. From my direct and indirect research, a whole lotta Republicans are FINALLY getting DONE with the identification of their party with gratuitous bigotry and the dumbass thinking that goes with it.

McCain apologized to the world for Cunningham’s intro, inspiring the immediate wrath of the dumbass bigot brigade. He also said he’d never met Cunningham, who insisted he’d met McCain twice. (That’s your senior moment.)

In interviews following the flap, Cunningham weirdly tried to claim the high road, calling Obama’s middle name the result of a “proud” family heritage. Uh … right. He then rose up to his “full nine inches” (I’m alluding to the Caterpillar in “Alice in Wonderland” for the fun of it) and, with all the indignation he could muster, said McCain had thrown him “under the bus” and that he was joining another darling of right wingnut-dom, Ann Coulter, in supporting Hillary Clinton. Somewhere, I guess that passes for moral courage.

I really just wonder what some of these people are on. McCain obviously has more to fear from the cultural Inquisition in the Republican Party’s midst than anything else. As the train of unhinged, right-wing illogic steams toward St. Paul, Minnesota, site of the Republican National Convention, it looks like the most compelling miniseries of the season may not be written in Hollywood.

What happens when right meets Right? Do conservatives even know what “conservative” means anymore? There’s sure to be plenty of ridiculousness ahead as Republicans try to figure out who the heck they really want to be.

Stay tuned.

Yours Truly, A.F. Cook