He's No 'Maverick' - McCain/Palin is Giving This Family a Bad Name

She's mad as hell and she's not going to take it any more. McCain/Palin have co-opted her family name and she wants them to stop.

'She' is 82-year-old Terellita Maverick, a San Antonio native whose ancestors' exploits gave rise to the word 'maverick.' She says she's "just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick." As the New York Times tells it:

[She] 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.

Since then, the Maverick family has gone to what conservatives might regard as 'liberal hell.' Their entire colorful story - as card-carrying members of the ACLU, among other left-leaning pursuits - is told here.

You have to have sympathy for the poor woman who, in the golden years of her life, should be able to rest easy as the matriarch of her family and enjoy the rewards of a lifetime of unrepentant liberalism. Instead, John McCain and Sarah Palin have stolen the true meaning of her birthright and are using 'Maverick' to their own ends, much to the family's horror:

"Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”

“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

Related article: Another woman equally disgruntled by McCain/Palin co-opting her song