As in Maverick! As in McCain!

I had forgotten to post a link to this article previously that goes into where the hell the word “maverick” comes from.

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.

Samuel’s descendants have largely stayed true to the family’s leftish, progressive ideals. They’ve defended draft resisters and atheists before the courts, worked in the Roosevelt administration, objected to the war in Iraq, and worked for the ACLU.

At least the 1950s television show Maverick, with (future Jim Rockford) James Garner in the titular role, was truer to type, turning a not-very-adept gunslinger into the boob tube’s first genuine anti-hero. As Bret Maverick, Garner was never that enthusiastic about saving the day, doing so only with a great reluctance accompanied by a fusillade of smart-assy smirks and comments. (Thereby laying the template for world-weary Jim Rockford and a thousand other accidental heroes). He intervened in spite of his instincts.

Senator McCain hardly demonstrates such recalcitrance; he has turned into a man of pure bluster, promising he can repair things—Health Care! the Economy! Social Security! the Environment!—without really saying how it’s so.