You’d be forgiven if you woke this morning wondering, “Is John McCain finally buried?” While the week of pomp and patriotism held many moments of beauty and power, at times the whole exercise seemed more like a Netflix series. Like The Crown, but with more pageantry. And more episodes.

Or maybe The Twilight Zone. We flipped on the TV late Saturday night and there he was again. Except this time Sen. McCain was wearing a goatee and snuggling close to former SNL star Amy Poehler. NBC was re-airing McCain’s September 2008 guest hosting appearance on Saturday Night Live. The episode was surreal. This particular sketch was disturbing.

Poehler played a wife in a Lifetime movie upset that her husband kept invading her personal space, acting as if it were akin to a sexual assault. McCain, with relish, put on this creepy, sleazy voice he must have picked up from Anthony Weiner.

It was the kind of thing you do two months before an election if you want to lose the women’s vote.

SNL meant the McCain episode as a tribute. In the post “Me Too” world, they did Sen. McCain no favors.

Meghan McCain

Naturally, much digital ink is being spent on daughter Meghan’s broadside against President Trump during Saturday’s service at Washington National Cathedral. With a stare that could return Arizona to the Ice Age, she spit, “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”

I get it. She’s grieving. She’s a daughter. She’s John McCain‘s daughter. And death, as a rule, is going to tick you off. At some point the anger is going to bubble over. Better directed at Trump than some stranger at a grocery store.

If your heart didn’t break for Meghan this past week, you might want to get it checked to see if it’s still ticking.

However, I do find it curious that Meghan — and obviously McCain himself, since he planned the whole shebang — has more anger toward Trump for one comment in the heat of the 2016 campaign than she does with Barack Obama and Joe Biden. All they did was head a campaign that worked overtime to brand McCain a racist.

McCain’s the One Who Died. So Why Was the Media Burying Trump?

Look. We get it. McCain and Trump did not get along … or perhaps we can say they did not get the chance to learn to get along. And credit to both men for not trying to pretend otherwise.

What’s mind-boggling is how much of the McCain media coverage was about Trump.

The Associated Press was particularly miserable.

Headline: “McCain Tributes Echo With Criticism of Trump”

Headline 2: “Trump Visits Golf Course While Washington Mourns McCain”

Golf? As if that’s all the President of the United States did Saturday. As if what Trump did with his day had any relevance to Sen. McCain’s six decades of service.

McCain’s flag-draped coffin was used as a battering ram against Trump.

It wasn’t just headlines. Both stories are chock-full of Trump references. Comparisons between McCain’s vision of America versus Trump’s alleged darker vision. The roar of applause that greeted Meghan McCain when she ripped into Trump. The fact she did it in front of daughter Ivanka Trump.

Believe it or not, an earlier version of AP’s story referred to McCain’s Vietnam ordeal only to contrast it with Trump not serving in Vietnam. Remember, Trump wasn’t there. Neither was President Clinton. He spent years fighting off charges he was a draft dodger. And President Obama didn’t serve in the military either. The closest he got to the military was befriending people who tried to blow up the Pentagon.

So why is the Associated Press — supposedly a neutral reporter of the news — trash talking Trump at the funeral?

All week long, the AP was running a story about McCain’s “courage” in reversing position and killing the Obamacare repeal at the last moment. That headline? “For McCain, a Lifetime of Courage, Politics Came Down to One Vote.”

In other words, in their eyes Senator John McCain’s shining achievement was pulling one over on Trump (and on the Republican party. And the voters of Arizona.)

If McCain Wasn’t a Trump Resister …

Simple question: Would McCain have gotten all the fawning attention from the media last week had he not spent his last two years being the Senate’s Silver Warrior for the Resistance? Of course not.

Supposd he had been more like pal Sen. Lindsay Graham, who is sharply critical when he feels the need, but has befriended the President. Coverage would have been much more measured. For example, we would have heard a lot more about McCain’s involvement with the Keating Five, more questioning of his foreign policy actions, more anecdotes about to his temper and ego. Balance.

Had McCain been a Trump supporter, we know what would have happened. The mainstream media would have mocked the patriotic displays, exposed his involvement in arming terrorists, and clamored endlessly about his being a “war-monger.” McCain’s racially-tinged tactics during the 2000 South Carolina primary would have been on an endless loop.

And you can bet they would have obsessed over how McCain screwed around on and dumped his first wife Sidney. “Just like Trump,” they would have said, heads shaking. We would not have heard the word “hero.”

But we are where we are. Trump Derangement Syndrome is such an epidemic that he’s the headliner at someone else’s funeral.

So Farewell

However, we don’t want to leave cynicism the last word when it comes to Sen. John McCain. America gave a larger-than-life send-off to a larger-than-life figure. The former fighter pilot wanted to leave with guns blazing. And so he did. A hero. A Senate giant. A Presidential candidate. A Saturday Night Live guest host. A pain in the tush to Presidents of both parties. The Maverick.

What more can we say? Only America could have created a John McCain.