McCain's Chelsea Joke and Other Thoughts

[Joanne98]

We got some debate going in the comments to my post that McCain's name should be thrown in with Fox News and the present day Republican Party as "having no sense of decency." OK, I'll amend it to "a very limited and inconsistent sense of decency."

I'll start with his Chelsea joke told in 1998 to a conservative throng. He said, "Why is Chlesea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno." The joke was so awful and vulgar that mainstream media sources, then and now, have declined to state the joke in print or on their air, though they have referred to it without giving its details. That even happened again today. Frank Rich referred to it in his op-ed today, but again, he didn't say exactly what the joke was. He did leave a link to the joke, and when I saw that I thought "Hooray, the Times is finally going to tell its audience what the joke was, if only through a link." Well, not so fast. I looked at the link. It was an old Maureen Dowd op-ed that also talked extensively about the joke, round and round it, without ever giving its precise terms.

It's still just too vulgar for prime time.

McCain later apologized to Bill Clinton (ya think?)--but not to Janet Reno.

Salon published the terms of the joke at the time. I noticed David Corn recently also did so on his blog. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., recorded it at the time with disgust in his journal, which his sons published last year after his death.

In the eyes of the Republican slander machine, all prominent Democratic women are lesbians: Eleanor Roosevelt, Ann Richards, Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno, etc., etc. Imagine how the Republicans would have savaged a 50-something black female, single, never married Secretary of State. As I was saying, no sense of decency.

Anyway, back to McCain. He got into the Naval Academy as a legacy from his military family and almost got kicked out of it in spite of that family. He was a trouble-maker and low achiever and finished fifth from the bottom of his class. Basically, he was a jerk.

After he returned from Viet Nam, he found that the beauty he had married was less beautiful, having been severely injured in a car wreck. He almost immediately began cheating on her extensively, and eventually stumbled on to Cindy, who was both rich and pretty. He cheated on his wife with Cindy, got a quick divorce, and married Cindy a mere month later.

It was Cindy, not John, who was from Arizona. He used her money and connections to enter Republican Politics. Until the Keating Five Scandal in 1994, he was a typical Repubican politician, doing the bidding of elite business interests and taking their money in the campaigns. After his brush with being tarred as unethical in the Keating Five Scandal, he took up the cause of campaign finance reform as a way to earn some redemption. That got him his "maverick" reputation, along with having been victimized by Karl Rove in the 2000 South Carolina Primary.

What about now? I recommend Joe Conason's current article in Salon. He reports that Obama has made clear to his wealthy supporters that they will not be welcome at his White House if they support 527 and 501(c) (4) organizations with their money to run stealth attacks on McCain. McCain has put out no similar edict to his big supporters. On the contrary, he has said "I can't be a referee of every spot run on TV," thus setting himself up, like both Bushes in the past, to be the beneficiary of slanderous attacks on his opponent while acting as if he has no responsibility for them.

A limited and very inconsistent sense of decency.
http://rendezvousdestiny.blogspot.com/2008/06/mccains-chelsea-joke-and-other-thoughts.html

[mahina]

1. They do think we're all lesbians...

at a protest when * darkened our city, three of us Moms were leaving when two republicans, dressed appropriately if kind of strangely in gorilla masks, snickered as they walked by, "get a room."

Three Moms.

They are obsessed.

Apology to gorillas...