Now that everything else has failed for him, John McCain is crawling back to David Letterman to appear on the Late Show this Thursday, after weaseling out of an earlier appearance under the lie that he was needed in Washington to work on the Wall Street bailout. McCain's people are, well, stupid. If he'd appeared when he was supposed to, Letterman would have treated him to a gentle ribbing while the candidate tried to get his talking points out. Now that McCain has lied to the famously testy talk show host—and now that there are tons of new gaffes and missteps that simply didn't exist when he was originally supposed to appear—what can he expect? Slaughter. Letterman isn't some lovable funnyman. He practically invented the contemporary asshole while Seinfeld and Larry David were first working out their club routines. And when a guest pisses him off, he can turn serious and downright mean. Just last week, he was discussing the possibility of having McCain back on the program when he said, ""In an attempt to save his campaign, they're talking about coming back. So we said, sure, we'd love you to come back ... but they're being squirrely. Politicians can be squirrely. ... I just don't know if we can trust him." Previously, Letterman remarked, "This just in…a backwoods hiker has found the wreckage of John McCain's campaign." So if McCain actually does show up on Thursday (though there's no reason to believe he will; Joe Six-Pack Americans watch Leno, his staff may conclude) it's not likely to be a slightly awkward goof-down like we've seen McCain engage in on The Daily Show after he'd given up his last few beliefs to win the GOP nomination. With any luck, Letterman will simply demand over and over again that McCain explain himself, show him evidence of the fact that he totally lied, and belittle his non-role in that bailout plan that didn't work anyway. Hopefully, McCain will lose it in the face of repeated questioning by some mere celebrity that he publicly snubbed, unable to believe that Letterman won't just drop it and make with the funny already. And, hopefully, next Friday's news channels and papers will be full of John McCain—bitter, rigid, elitist, crybaby. [Washington Post]