Sen. John McCain speaks to reporters following the weekly Republican policy luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington. | AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File Fourth Estate Are Journalists Allowed to Criticize John McCain? Not as far as I can tell.

Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

I’m almost certain that a samizdat chapter of the Associated Press Stylebook exists that prohibits journalists from writing anything praiseful about Republicans—except when one dies or if the Republican’s name is John McCain.

Sen. McCain, who died Saturday, went to his grave festooned with a bundle of the most radiant tributes from the reporters who covered him. Taking to Twitter, the airwaves and print, journalists choked back tears to gush about how much the man meant to them. Sunday on MSNBC, anchor Kasie Hunt had to be restrained from throwing herself on his funeral pyre as she addressed him directly. “Sen. McCain, after a decade of trying to keep up with you in those marble hallways, I know the place that you so loved is going to be a lesser place without you,” Hunt said. “My hope for this Congress and this country is that remembering and honoring your life and legacy, sir, will inspire the best among us to serve as you did. Godspeed.”


On Monday, Hunt used Twitter to add some whipped cream to the sweet potato pie she’d baked for the senator. “I miss him. We all miss him,” Hunt moped.

We? Who’s we? Well, a short list would include Jeremy Herb of CNN, Bret Baier of Fox News Channel, David M. Drucker of the Washington Examiner, Haley Byrd of the Weekly Standard, Dana Bash of CNN, and Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post, all of whom used Twitter to burn like Fourth of July sparklers about what an honor and a privilege it had been to cover McCain.

Other journalists crashed the McCain wake with negligible anecdotes that were indistinguishable from name-dropping. Glenn Thrush of the New York Times gave him credit for establishing “eye contact” with reporters even when he didn’t want to talk to them. Tim Mak of NPR searched his notes and found this: One time McCain yelled at Mak for asking questions, but then, about an hour later after votes, the senator returned to personally apologize. “That was the kind of man he was,” Mak wrote. Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin kept the theme rolling with a first-person reminiscence of traveling abroad with McCain. “You knew McCain liked you when he started insulting you to your face,” Rogin wrote. I guess we’ll have to take his word for it that McCain liked him.

It would be a mistake, though, to think that the press corps’ McCain love commenced on the day he died. Back in May, when his illness promised an imminent end, the pressies were already cranking up the adoration. Bret Stephens and Gail Collins of the New York Times chatted online in a piece whose headline accurately summed up their views: “Maybe We Don’t Deserve John McCain.” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni effused in a similar manner.

The senator reaped glowing press throughout most of his career, Paul Farhi writes in the Monday Washington Post, because he genuinely liked reporters and gave them reliable access. “He was plain-spoken, self-deprecating and always in possession of an amusing anecdote or quip,” Farhi continues. McCain broke the records for the most appearances on Face the Nation (112) and Meet the Press (73). He jokingly referred to reporters as his “base,” and his willingness to provide snappy and regular copy made him the go-to for reporters on deadline. His appeal was enhanced, of course, by the fact that he knew how to sound like a “maverick” Republican when speaking to reporters, even though—as Andrew Ferguson documented in 2006—his voting record earned him high ratings for orthodoxy from the National Right to Life Committee, the American Conservative Union and the Christian Coalition.

Those who offered a dissenting or realistic view on McCain were rewarded with abuse. Laura McGann, politics editor of Vox, unleashed a lava storm of protest with these critical words just a few hours after he died: “Today, I’m told, we should pretend John McCain didn’t pick Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008.” Thousands upon thousands of Twitter respondents denounced McGann for the temerity to offer a dissenting view on McCain as he approached death. Maybe somebody should forward the samizdat chapter of the AP Stylebook to McGann so she doesn’t issue another honest postmortem.

Journalists have long harbored a reputation for being hard-nosed cynics. But as the mourning for McCain proves, scratch their surface and sentimentality runs out of them sweeter than maple sap in the spring.

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When John F. Kennedy was murdered, I.F. Stone wrote, “Funerals are always occasions for pious lying.” In May, I wrote about the press corps’ last McCain swoon. Send hate mail to [email protected]. My email alerts once watched McCain on TV with my Twitter. They’ll be writing up the experience in their forthcoming joint memoir. My RSS feed attributes 50 percent of the McCain goodwill as an expression of ill will toward Trump.