John McCain never got the hero's welcome he deserved, and you can tell it still gnaws away at the back of his mind. He's jealous.

The brighter Barack Obama's star shines, the more John McCain wants to reduce his opponent's substance to the gossamer dreams of studio hype and the nutritional value of buttered popcorn. McCain has gone Hollywood, releasing a slick, high-concept ad starring Obama as "The One," a preening superstar adored by the political paparazzi, and featuring guest appearances by Britney Spears and Charlton Heston as Moses.

Let's stipulate: McCain has fewer adoring fans than Obama. But McCain's relatively dim star power owes as much to his bad imitation of Nora Desmond as it does to Obama's proven charisma. And no, McCain is not ready for his closeup, Mr. DeMille, especially not his left side or his creepy forced smile.

Instead, "Johnny Mac" is trying hard to boost his box office by recasting Obama as a "celebrity," but most voters just don't view Obama as some sort of political Elmer Gantry. The one audience McCain's buzzword does seem to be getting some traction with is the press, whose eagerness to repeat McCain's gripe du jour about Obama runs contrary to the disgruntled senator's other complaint that the news media are throwing the Illinois senator roses at every turn.

Of course, McCain is a celebrity also and has been for over thirty years. Graduating 894th among his class of 899 at the U.S. Naval Academy, McCain was closer to being "Bottom Gun" than he was to the cooly dangerous Maverick played by Tom Cruise in "Top Gun." His name skyrocketed to fame not long after the news he bailed out of his stricken fighter jet into enemy hands.

Obama is right to note that McCain deserves respect for his real-life military service and sacrifice as a POW. Yet McCain's image as a political maverick since then is as carefully groomed as a Hollywood lawn. McCain touts his willingness to play both sides of an issue as a humble virtue, while ridiculing Obama's few policy shifts as spineless pandering.

Now The Honorable One from Arizona is criticizing Obama for being what amounts to wildly popular. Of course, it isn't likely McCain would refuse attention from whole stadiums full of voters, either, if he could only step up from packing high school gyms.

To see how desperate for attention McCain is, one need only compare his definition of celebrity with any standard dictionary's. As a dictionary defines it, a celebrity refers to a person who has achieved a high degree of prominence and media exposure. McCain uses the word as an epithet meaning a vain creature propelled to vapid stardom by fawning media. (Note the addition of cynical adjectives and airhead starlets.)

If Obama wanted to turn that distorted portrait on its head, he would invoke a different kind of celebrity. The kind that drew tens of thousands of cheering New Yorkers out to see John Glenn after he became the first American to orbit the Earth. Or the celebrity that summoned 250,000 to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak of his "Dream." The kind that idled every car on a busy California highway in deference to the funeral motorcade of an actor-turned-president. Even the kind that made John McCain famous for surviving a POW camp.