July 10, 2008 | 2:08 pm

The Straight-Talk Express returns

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Cheering for the wrong team in the 2006 Rose Bowl

John McCain’s off-handed snipe at his wife’s alma mater, the University of Spoiled Children, has won some of my favor. An LA Times op-ed with the details after the jump.

It’s not an original joke, of course—it’s been around for ages, possibly even as long as John McCain himself—but it said a lot about the man who wants to be president.

It says he’s honest. He’s a straight-talker. And he’s willing to speak truth to ... well, not to power, exactly, but to healthy, fit young people in shorts and flip-flops. Which is more than his opponent can say.

The offhand comment caused what we’d call, back when I was going to college at workaday, no-nonsense Yale, a “dreadful kerfuffle.” Apparently, there are kids at USC who don’t appreciate being singled out as uniquely spoiled, who don’t like it when a potential leader of the free world calls them out on the hacky-sack and Facebook and beer-pong life they lead, from the moment they rise, sleepy and bed-headed (at 11:47 a.m., if memory serves), until they crash, exhausted, at 4 in the afternoon for a short nap, only to wake again at the insistence of their roommates, who need someone to serve as the iPod DJ.

Read the rest of Rob Long’s column here. In less encouraging news, USC has been threatening UCLA the past few years, getting closer in rank and striving to shake its other derisive nickname—University of Second Choice.

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