Line Dancer

From a gossip column in today's Philadelphia Daily News:
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...The question: What names did downed pilot John McCain give to his North Vietnamese torturers when they asked him to name his crewmates?...

...Here's your answer: Chuck Hinton, Ben McGee, Lloyd Voss and Ken Kortas, the 1967 Pittsburgh Steelers defensive line....

Say what? McCain had memorized the obscure defensive line of a rotten 4-9-1 football team?

Well, that's what he told Pittsburgh's KDKA-TV last week. The blogosphere immediately exploded with allegations of pandering. In his 1999 book, "Faith of My Fathers," McCain wrote that he had recited the Green Bay Packers D-line to his captors.

That makes sense. The 1967 Packers (McCain was shot down Oct. 27, 1967) were the defending Super Bowl champs. And that front four - Willie Davis, Henry Jordan, Lionel Aldridge, Ron Kostelnik - was a helluva line.

Jon Delano, the western Pennsylvania political analyst who was interviewing McCain when he made the gaffe, doesn't think it was intentional, calling it an "innocent slip."

A McCain campaign spokesman called it a "memory lapse."...

You don't have to be Peggy Noonan, Richard Cohen or David Broder to see the problem here: John McCain isn't thinking or talking about his captivity frequently enough to keep his facts straight. He's got a memory like a hero, that guy!