End of an era:Jim Newell didn’t want to join every other political reporter in admiring John McCain but, he writes, eventually he had no choice. Isaac Chotiner interviews Geoffrey Kabaservice, a historian of the GOP, about whether or not McCain was a “moderate Republican” (Kabaservice thinks not). Will Saletan remembers a recent McCain address that redefined patriotism against Trumpism, and Josh Keating recalls a decade-old campaign speech that showed off McCain’s “ideological interventionism“ in matters of foreign policy. And Laura Miller thinks everyone should take a second look at that David Foster Wallace essay on McCain’s 2000 campaign, which turns out to tell us more about McCain’s claims to authenticity, and Wallace’s susceptibility to those claims, than about McCain himself.

Careful:Approach accusations that Pope Francis was involved in a cover-up of sexual abuse with caution, Massimo Faggioli tells Isaac Chotiner. The church is engulfed in feuds, and these allegations may be part of the game.

Villain: Omarosa took the “angry black woman” stereotype and parlayed it into a career on reality TV and in politics, Robin M. Boylorn writes. Her influence has been vast, and damaging.

For fun: Meet the Feeblesvs. The Happytime Murders.

A disturb-me-off,

Rebecca