Wednesday, September 3, 2008

McCain and the Ladies

How did this joke not ruin McCain?
John McCain at a fundraising dinner in Arizona a decade ago: "Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly?" he told a handful of big Republican funders. "Because Janet Reno is her father."

The remark packed into its 15 words several layers of misogyny. It disparaged the looks of Chelsea, then 18 and barely out of high school; it portrayed Reno as a man at a time when she was serving as the first female US attorney general; and it implied that Hillary Clinton was engaged in a lesbian affair while the Monica Lewinsky scandal was blazing. Not bad going, Senator McCain.

Any one of those elements would seem potentially terminal for a public figure. Yet here he is 10 years later presenting himself as a champion of feminism by appointing Sarah Palin as his running mate.

From the McSame guy who called his wife a plastered trollop. Geez.

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