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Yet Another Aging Republican Frat Boy Vying for the ‘Ladies Choice’ Award

In the latest installment of John McCain’s bizarre relationship with women, he gleefully offered up his long-suffering wife as a contestant for the X-rated ‘Miss Buffalo Chip’ Beauty Pageant at the Sturgis, SD, Biker Rally, an event which included simulating fellatio on a banana and something called a ‘pickle-licking’ contest, although it’s not clear, according to Josh Marshall at TPM, if that last item is actually part of the beauty pageant or a separate Olympic sport.

McCain, hunched over and reading his speech from a music stand, was caught on videotape grinning and crowing,

“I encouraged Cindy to compete,” McCain said to cheers. “I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip.”
– From CNN, August 5, 2008.

Yes, that line was part of McCain’s script. Gee, the president’s wife AND an Easy Rider ‘sissy seat’ occupant in a string bikini — will wonders never cease in the alternate universe of the McCain campaign? If elected, will Misogyny Mac be president of the US and the Hell’s Angels as well? (The Carpetbagger Report has further details.)

I’ve had friends who were bikers; some of them were good people, and I think Americans should live, dress and act however they choose, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else – but I wouldn’t want any of them in the White House. (And they wouldn’t want to be there either.) The bikers I’ve met roughly demarcate into two groups: the mellow ‘hippies on hogs’ who are generally decent folks who like the freedom of the ‘ride fast’ motorcycle lifestyle, and the angry, violent, usually racist “I’ll kill your ass and piss in your skull” types who live to cause other people grief. The latter were the crazies who murdered that black guy at the Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert in 1969 and I’d bet a sidecar stuffed with sawbucks that those were the same types who were revving their engines while McCain spoke.

At any rate, you might think this would be one of those “Aha, here’s the politician’s true character laid bare” moments the Big Media likes to spring on Dems, from Hillary’s laugh to Obama ordering orange juice instead of coffee at a diner, but, except for Keith Olbermann and Dan Abrams on MSNBC, it was hardly mentioned save for a few male pundits who, chuckling indulgently, dismissed it as more of McCain’s ‘maverick’ sensibility joined with his ‘fighter jock mentality.’ Yep, that’s just what we need in the next president – a guy mired in the frat boy sexism of the mid-20th century to lead us in the 21st.

Earlier this year there was some baseless bantering by the Punditocracy that Obama might have some ‘problem’ with women, but these same Below-the-Beltway talkers are silent on McCain’s manifest disrespect for those who don’t happen to be male. McCain’s degrading relationships with women have a long history, as Kate Sheppard delineates in “McSexist: McCain’s War on Women,” (In These Times, July 24, 2008):

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