John McCain and Women (warning, graphic photo)

McCamy Taylor

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Sun Aug-31-08 05:52 AM
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John McCain and Women (warning, graphic photo)

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.
Simone de Beauvoir

I. Labels

At the moment, John McCain is playing White Knight (as in Knights of the KKK, from Birth of a Nation ) in a series of reprehensible ads in which he promises to save flowers of American womanhood from his opponent’s monumental penis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHXYsw_ZDXg

However, less than a year ago, he was laughing along as Republicans called one of the most respected women in American politics today a bitch .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Nt5ADY7ug

He called the mother of his children something much worse, in front of reporters. Luckily for him, this was back in 1992, in the days before the internet, so the word cunt could not be reported.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_temper_boiled_over_in_92_0407.html

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

It is the presence of the reporters that makes this story so awful. You can not excuse this as playful banter, with members of the press there to witness his words. John McCain's vanity was wounded, and so he put his wife in her place. All she could do was smile---and go find some pills to help her swallow the pain.

II. Trophy

Don’t get me wrong. John McCain likes women---of the Barbie Doll, Miss America variety. But some of the worst woman haters are womanizers. They are the men who tell women It’s your own fault that I treat you this way. I would love you if you were just perfect enough. You should be more like my mom. His first wife was a beauty queen. According to friends, he dumped her when she lost her looks in a car accident almost as traumatic as his POW experience.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html

‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.

‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.”
Snip

‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ (Ross Perot) said.

‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’

It is disgusting to read (male) commentators talk about how John McCain gets a pass for trading in his now short, overweight, disabled, pain stricken first wife for a new, sleek model, as if his nation owed him a new beauty queen after his POW experience. Here is Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post quoting a conservative rag about “compassionate conservativism”.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/12/AR2008061200998_2.html

On the right, Townhall's Matt Lewis offers a little compassionate conservatism:

"Some McCain supporters take solace in the fact that McCain and his ex-wife are still friends. My take is that it's unrealistic to assume someone could come back from years of torture as a POW, and resume normal domestic tranquility -- even with the person who stuck with them through the whole mess . . .Personally, this story seems like a bit of a hit job."

Statements like that perpetuate the myth that women are chattel and that the conquering hero returning from war expects to be given only the finest of nubile plundered female slaves for his pleasure. What about Carol? She endured six months of agony in a hospital so that she could be there when her POW husband returned. Maybe she would have preferred to die rather than go through all those surgeries in which they whittled away at her legs. Maybe she only endured it for her children. What kind of reward should she get for being a good wife and mother? A stud from Chip-n-dales? No, because women do not deserve anything. They are dolls. If they have feelings, they are freaks, and they had better take some pills to keep those emotions under control, because men don’t want to hear their women bitch and moan. They want them to smile and obey.

And they want them to be young, too. Even though McCain got another chance at a beauty queen, this one rich, that has not stopped him from cheating. Witness Vicki Iseman, hired by Paxson Communications to convince McCain to hand out favors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/us/politics/21mccain.html?pagewanted=4&hp

Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

This time, there was no “just returned from Nam shell shocked” excuse. This time, he was cheating on an attractive, rich wife with a younger blonde who had nothing to offer him except more flattery and a firmer body.

John McCain’s most recent “trophy” atrocity occurred at the Biker Rally, in which he proudly offered his wife for participation in this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVQHJd_3J7g

event. Warning: extreme GOP family values girl on girl and girl on banana action included.

III. Mom

Every child’s first love (except in the most extraordinary of circumstances) is his or her mother.

John McCain’s mother sued John’s first wife, Carol, shortly after the divorce.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080816/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_old_lawsuits

In the 1980 lawsuit, filed shortly after John and Carol McCain divorced, Roberta sued Carol to reclaim some personal property, including paintings, a needlepoint screen and a pair of earrings. A settlement was reached in 1981.

In a brief telephone interview, Roberta denied filing the lawsuit.

"I have never heard of what you're talking about. ... I will put my hand on a Bible," she said, to attest that she had never sued Carol.

Roberta's denial prompted laughter from her former daughter-in-law.

"Yes, she sued me," Carol said in a brief phone interview.

Roberta's lawsuit sought personal property she claimed Carol was refusing to return. The disputed items included an "18th century Burmise Buddist Preist (Burmese Buddhist priest)" valued by Roberta at $2,000, and a "Butlers Tray for Liquor" she valued at $225.

Roberta McCain is trotted out by the campaign to show that the candidate could live another twenty years. However, when she opens her mouth, she gives a clue about why John McCain may have so much trouble with women.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/McCains_mom_gives_GOP_some_straight_0125.html

"I'm really popping off," the elder McCain continued, "but he worked like a dog to get Bush reelected. He's backed Bush in everything except Rumsfeld. ... And I've never seen any public recognition of the work that he's done for the Republican Party."

Can you say “Bush’s poodle?” And yet, John McCain adores this woman, and lets her prattle on, as if her words are pure gold.

Speaking of gold, Team McCain likes to pretend that the candidate came from a middle class family. However, this site describes his mother, Roberta as an extremely wealthy, beautiful debutante who has never lacked for anything in her life. Note the story about how she went out one day to buy a dress and come home with a Mercedes. I am sure all middle class Americans can identify with this tale.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/mccain.htm

This Newsweek article has more psychological info about the McCain family, including the fact that his father was a closet alcoholic, whom his mother protected from discovery. John was aware of his father’s condition. While he has not inherited his father’s alcoholism, he has inherited his temper. One telling line from the article:

The nominee's own partying days, from the Navy through his first years back in the United States after his captivity, appear to have had more to do with women and with song than with wine.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/156488/page/6

The Iseman affair suggests that McCain has his own problems with judgment and impulse control, only in his case they revolve around beautiful, adoring women—like his mother. It must have come as quite a shock when Carol stopped being there for him, and he had to be there for Carol.

What was it like for a child to have to take part in the conspiracy to hide his father’s alcoholism? To be his father’s parent, in effect. Did he feel like he had to share his mother? How is a man who expects women to be there for him supposed to be there for a nation of 300 million people, all of whom will expect him to put their needs before his own? A president must have a powerful nurturing instinct, or else he or she will ignore the best interests of the country and focus instead on his or her own selfish whims.

The husband whom Carol McCain said asked for a divorce, because he never wanted to grow up, still has not shown any signs of growing up. Like W., he plans to spend his life as a boy, perpetually searching for a nice, soft teat from which to nurse.

IV. Beauty Queen

I suspect that John McCain thinks that he has done something special in offering the nation a vice-presidential nominee who is a former beauty queen. In his world, a woman who has been judged the best in a contest or in a debutante ball or at a rodeo or a Mis Buffalo Chip pageant must be the best.

He probably thinks that he is honoring women, by choosing a brunette with glasses who looks studious, rather than his usual blonde. He has no idea how many women have been passed over for jobs or promotions, because there has been some other Sarah Palin, ex-beauty queen in glasses, chosen for her looks, rather than her experience or competence.

Her self professed ignorance about foreign policy is a slap in the face of the Hillary Clintons of the world, but to the Republicans it is no drawback. She is supposed to appeal to the just plain folks demographic, whom the Republicans keep trying to convince that knowledge is the root of all evil so that they will not read a newspaper or go online. Her ignorance is transformed into a becoming feminine innocence. She is more concerned with domestic matters, like making sure all embryos are born and all oil gets drilled and all polar bears die.

In the kind of world where women like Gov. Palin and Roberta McCain and Cindy and Carol before the accident but not after represent the ideal, women like this

do not even count.

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/issues/95b18512-d5b6-456e-90a2-12028d71df58.htm

John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench.

Constitutional balance would be restored by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion question to the individual states.

snip

This work must continue and government must find new ways to empower and strengthen these armies of compassion. These important groups can help build the consensus necessary to end abortion at the state level.

It does not get any clearer than that. Well, actually it does. He could have chosen a Republican woman such as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas who is pro-choice, a stance which the majority of women in this country favor, if he was serious about courting the vote of women and proving himself a real maverick . Instead, he proved himself to be a faux maverick by selecting a woman who has declared that she is 100% anti-choice. Those of us old enough to remember before Roe V. Wade was the law of the land know that when there is "no choice", working class women and single mothers and women of color who can not afford to fly to California or New York are left with only one choice----the back alley.