Read about that gratingly offensive rhetorical brain cramp phrase the guy uses, already noted and analyzed, here, so that I can let the man and that article speak for themselves.
McCain's using the MF terminology ["... my friends ..."] apparently is his little verbal prop just as others [per initials SP] gratingly say, "you know," repeatedly.
Moreover, McCain's "my friends" as something the Slate article previously noted was not only apparent to me over the course of listening to the latest "debate." Instead, it was prominently noted in a spectrum of today's follow-up reporting ranging from Wall Street Journal to Huffington Post.
Although probably too late at this point, it might help the man's chances if his handlers coaxed him to drop using the phrase. But he's an old dog. And dropping "my friends" would be a new trick. As far back as July 22, 2008, USA Today had this photo, this quote:
"My friends, we have to drill offshore — we have to do it," McCain said during a town-hall-style meeting in Rochester, N.H.
While Paul Collins in the Slate article dissects usage of "my friends" as traditional hack oratory, the phrase dates back further then Collins noted, "my friends" having been used by McCain predecessor Huey Long, in promising Every Man a King. [update - I am wrong, no excuse - Collins did mention the Cross of Gold speech, from forty years or so before Huey Long].
Huey used the term 19 times in that speech. Interestingly, according to Huffington Post, McCain exactly equaled Huey. However, Huey's speech can be read in a few minutes while McCain, as a would-be-Huey, needed over an hour's time to reach 19. In agreement, WSJ noted "my friends" 18 times, plus "my friend" in the singular, to reach 19. McCain from time to time made marks on a side-table paper, perhaps counting usages to assure exactly matching Louisiana's Huey Long, "the Kingfish" (a "maverick," while in the US Senate).
______UPDATE_____
I found another online item, this blog, this quote:
Sen. McCain on Jobs No American Citizens Want, Even at $50/Hour:
The comments to one of my posts pointed to this claim by Sen. McCain:[Speaking to the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department, McCain took] questions, including a pointed one on his immigration plan.
McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.
Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain's job offer.
"I'll take it!" one man shouted.
McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. "You can't do it, my friends."
How can this assertion of his possibly be right? Fifty dollars an hour is $100,000 per year. I suspect the lettuce-picking season is shorter than a year, but it's still $50,000 per six months, assuming a 40 hour/week pace. It's possible that no-one in that particular crowd would think this is a good deal; among other things, they already had jobs that likely pay pretty well, and perhaps most of them were older and not terribly fit (McCain saw the crowd and I didn't). But surely there must be some substantial number of current American citizens who would be quite willing to engage even in highly strenuous physical labor for an annualized wage of $100,000 per year, no? Even if 99% of all Americans would be unwilling or unable to do the job, the remaining 1% should be plenty to fill those hypothetical jobs.
Now perhaps Sen. McCain should have just chosen a lower number; maybe his claim would have been plausible at that number, though I'm not sure. But it seems odd that he would choose a number that is so clearly out of place for his argument — that he would seemingly deliberately engage in such pretty patent overstatement.
I imagine Sen. Obama, having done extensive community work in the Chicago area, would not be so out of touch as to say or imply offering $50 per hour as pay for an unskilled labor job is a disdainful and demeaning proposal.
Finally, back to those two McCain photos. Would YOU buy a used automobile from a salesman with that smile? Most certainly, I would not buy an old dog not able to learn any worthwhile new tricks from an individual smiling that way. It's a smile made 100% out of pure plastic, something he got in a Cracker Jacks box, like Elwyn Tinklenberg did for his smile.
_______FURTHER UPDATE______
More on Honest John, a man of class, discernment and sensitivity, courting votes in a way Obama wouldn't or couldn't - where the string of reader comments notes "my friends" being as much a prop and a product brand of McCain as of Huey Long, (who would likely have been equally as at home working the same crowd); a CNN report from August, here:
“As you may know,” he told the tens of thousands gathered at the 68th annual Sturgis Rally at Buffalo Chip campground, “not long ago, a couple of hundred thousand Berliners made a lot of noise for my opponent. I’ll take the roar of fifty thousand Harleys any day.”
Bikers in the crowd, who had arrived from around the country to partake in the massive outdoor party, revved their engines numerous times in support of the presumptive GOP nominee. McCain said it was music to his ears.
“This is my first time here,” he said, “but I recognize that sound. It’s the sound of freedom.”
Remember Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now,
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning."
But wait, there's more.
CNN from McCain at Sturgis, continues:
As the senator made his way through a sea of motorcycle enthusiasts, shaking hands with the many veterans in attendance and accompanied by his wife Cindy and Sen. John Thune, he was surrounded by scores of beer drinking men and scantily clad women, many of whom were as thrilled to see the war hero candidate as they were to watch Kid Rock perform later in the evening.
If there were any Obama supporters to be found in the vast Buffalo Chip campground, they kept quiet.
Indeed, McCain felt so comfortable at the event that he even volunteered his wife for the rally’s traditional beauty pageant, an infamously debauched event that’s been known to feature topless women.
“I encouraged Cindy to compete,” McCain said to cheers. “I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip.”
They have a video clip you can view. I did not bother. This Sturgis appearance shows the same sensitivity, lack of cynicism, and class-act character that McCain used in picking Sarah Palin -- a choice appearing more aimed at Harley voters than women voters.
_______FURTHER UPDATE________
Don't read me wrongly, by all this I am not saying give Obama a blank check. It is the opposite of that. I am dismayed by the bailout not having any real disincentive for or curb upon looting by all upper-echelon executives and what they could "earn" from failing ventures needing a government bailout. I am doubtful of whether Obama may actually want or be able to reform tax brackets and rates the way he has promised to try. In this sense, back to Huey Long, I find little wrong with his "Share the Wealth" speech nor anything wrong in having its aims and suggestions as current goals. Crabgrass readers should read both Huey Long speeches because each has a place and a relevance to the current presidential campaign, and to the present state of the US and world economies. Share the Wealth never was a bad notion, except to those owning it. And McCain did promise us all a sterner retirement in the future than those now retired, saying that sitting at the table "fixing" social security meant that. Obama stood silent in response to that humdinger, something I did not particularly like in the session. So, with one candidate poking a stick in the eye of the AARP, and the other declining to poke a stick in the eye at the top of that pyramid they have on the back of the one dollar bill - there was an air of business as usual in the latter, not the former.