Let McCain Be McCain, You Cunt!

The net-roots have been abuzz with reports on this indelicacy some years ago:

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die?

When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’

John McCaint's taste for sexist jokes does not end with his amusement with rape and bestiality, apparently. Kim Gandy of NOW was polite:

"Some people can't tell the difference between a joke that is really off color and one that is off-the-charts offensive, and clearly some of John McCain's 'jokes' fall into that category," she said.

Outside the contested rape joke, the most notorious of McCain's gags about women's looks came in 1998, when Chelsea Clinton was 18.

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?" he asked guests at a Senate Republican fundraiser. "Because her father is Janet Reno."

McCain's other jokes don't induce cringes quite as widespread, but Gandy said they were still likely to alienate women.

"The French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it," McCain told Fox News a few years ago.

And earlier this year, McCain responded to a question with the line, "And I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago," provoking a round of tut-tutting for his reference to the old classic example of a leading question.

Women are far from his only target. Another favorite has been the elderly. He has recalled groveling for forgiveness when, during his 1986 campaign, he referred to a retirement community called "Leisure World" as "Seizure World."

See, he was a Navy pilot, you see, a regular "Tail-hook" kinda guy. (Anybody'd try to land a jet on a carrier is a crazy motherfucker. McCaint' wasn't even very good at that, but that didn't mean he wasn't--and isn't, still--a crazy motherfucker.) He was critical of the Navy later, during the investigation, but mainly for getting caught. Likely he attended no small number of Tail-hook "gatherings." (Perhaps he took his trollop/cunt wife along as a party favor?)

But Bombin' John's not one o'them 'poh-liti-kalee koh-reck' kinda guys, unnerstan'. Don't care he offends. You piss him off, you fuck widdim, he'll ram a fucking 500-pounder up your tailpipe, pussy...

Ali, at ThinkProgress, posted this illuminating explanation, by the campaign for the murderous, malignant McCaint's sexist lapses. It proves he's "authentic."

the campaign insisted these offensive jokes proved McCain was “authentic” and showed “McCain being McCain”:

“He’s long said that he’s said and done things in the past that he regrets,” [McCain spokesman Brian] Rogers said. “You’ve just got to move on and be yourself — that’s what people want. They want somebody who’s authentic, and this kind of stuff is a good example of McCain being McCain.“

(Yeah, everybody loves an authentic asshole. Ed. Note) The mainstream media has also gushed over McCain’s “trademark wit,” declaring that a joke about blowing up Jon Stewart with an IED “makes him seem much more accessible” because “everybody likes a guy with a good sense of humor.”

It's interesting to read McCaint on the issue of accountability. Here's Bombin' Johnnie on the fate of Admiral Kelso, on whose watch the Tailhook scandal occurred:

"...one of the problems today in America, in our government, not just in the military, is that people in charge say, "I'm responsible," and then bear no responsibility."