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Matt Cooper and Harry Shearer

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John McCain, Hollywood's Darling

By Matt Cooper
Posted Monday, Jan. 3, 2000, at 4:27 PM ET

Harry,

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I hear you on Putin. I guess Sandy Berger and the Clintonites are clinging to the fact that the new Russian prez worked with the liberal mayor of St. Petersburg in the late '80s, but that doesn't seem so comforting. Hey, at the end of the day it's Uganda with nukes. Can you imagine who we'd turn to if our country was one-tenth as screwed up as theirs? I was boning up for our Yeltsin coverage over the weekend and read that their GDP has shrunk 43 percent since 1990. We have a recession for a few months in which the GDP barely dips, and we seriously consider handing the country over to Ross Perot.

Yeah, the Yeltsin farewell was truly bizarre. Besides his halting tone, that shot of him at an unusually wide table with a feeble Christmas tree behind him added to the whole Madame Tussaud effect.

Hey, don't get me wrong on "Peanuts." I'm basically a Simpsons kind of guy. Irony über alles! But "Peanuts" did have a sophisticated side beyond the Met Life crap. After all, the cartoon was inhabited by self-doubters (Charlie Brown, Linus, Peppermint Pattie) and narcissists (Lucy, Snoopy), which made it a lot more nuanced than, say "Blondie" or "Beetle Bailey." All discussions of comedy are invariably lame, so I'll stop here, but suffice it to say, I'm still (sniff, sniff) hurting a bit. On Capra, vive la différence but I'm a fan--again, not because of its cheerfulness but because of its dark side.

On another topic: Does Hollywood love McCain? Washington is still romancing the guy in a way that makes previous presidential infatuations (Tsongas, Babbitt, Anderson) look like spin the bottle. I thought I saw something about how Geffen liked him even though he's backing Gore. Can Tom Hanks be far behind? I've dealt with McCain some and I'm not impervious to the charm either. Part of it, I think, beyond his much-remarked-upon candor or campaign-finance support is the fact that he's so at peace about Vietnam--unlike the rest of the country. He jokes about it; he supported recognition of Hanoi; he doesn't piss on those who didn't serve. He's walking, talking absolution for the rest of us. That's not a bad calling card.

Best,
Matt