Sometime known as John McCain.

Writes Wes Baker:

Lew,

I’ve taken the liberty of latinizing John McCain’s name by attribute rather than by translation.  (Scelus meaning wicked, evil.)  I do this to introduce one of the traits in which American culture has surpassed the ancients.  The apotheosis of the state’s henchmen.

The pumpkinfication part comes from Seneca, the younger, who wrote a satirical apotheosis piece on the emperor, Claudius, entitled, Apocolocyntosis.  Greek for gourd or pumpkin.

I thought ‘pumpkin’ fitting in tone and description of the late warmonger.  A vegetable of varying hues, lately round and mostly vacuous, many times displayed in effigy for autumnal evil spirits.  I pray his fate is not like Seneca’s Claudius, but I’m afraid, if there’s any cosmic justice, it’ll be worse.