Joke's On Us If We Think McCain is Funny...or Worthy of Our Vote
After blogging about McCain's lack of real support for women, my colleagues sent along more examples of his gender insensitivity.
Buck Wolf of Weird News pointed me toward the fact that in 1986, when now-presidential candidate John McCain was first running for the US Senate, he reportedly told a very tasteless joke about an ape, a rape, and whole lot more not worth repeating. (If you must know what he said, the joke is at Huffington Post.)
Deborah White
Team McCain denies that he ever cracked these jokes.
To give you a sense of how truly off-color McCain's comments are in the context of contemporary stand-up comedy, I'll share an email I received on this subject from another colleague who asked to remain anonymous:
I was on the phone with my buddy who's an emcee at NY's Comic Strip and I challenged him to think of a joke anyone has ever said on a stage that could possibly piss off a woman more. (He has worked with Dice Clay and Andy Dick and Tom Greene.)Hey, did you hear the one about the country's oldest presidential candidate who tried to recast himself as supportive of women? You'll have to wait until election day for the punch line.He couldn't do it.
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Comments
Keep searching Nobama Fans
1986, geez, give me a break.
Nobama Fan, try again, this one didn’t get it
Please, people, there are more pressing issues than “gender insensitivity” and off-color remarks. Don’t tell me you don’t do the same things about males. Or are you holier than thou? Have you noticed, we are in the middle of a war!!! The economy is tanking. As for Obama, he does not have a track record of much of anything in the Senate. He goes to a church that delivers hate messages week after week. Maybe because it is hate messages against white people, it does not matter, hey? Now, isn’t that something to REALLY worry about? You know, we have turned into a nation of whinners who are unable to discern what’s important. You are definitely part of the whinners. And, for the record, I am a woman.
As an Illinois resident, I can tell you Obama did nothing for us as a State senator. Why would we believe he’s going to clean up Washington when he never even tried to clean up Chicago, one of the dirtiest political cities?
Actually… I had heard both the gorilla and the Janet Reno jokes before… a couple years ago while on assignment in a blue-collar setting dominated by women… And the jokes were told by women and passed along via e-mail by women…
So, the double-standard is fully intact.
I am surprised that so many people who clearly don’t agree with your views take the time to comment here. I am thankful that you write about women’s issues with regards to politicians. Your column is titled ‘Women’s Issues,’ so you are doing your job! Anyone who writes ‘Nobama’ probably should stick to other sites anyway.
And for all those years in Arizona, McCain didn’t impress. Maybe ‘years as a senator’ should not really matter. Intelligence, logic, and fresh ideas – those are qualities I would like to see in charge of our country.
EL, thanks for coming to my defense, but I actually welcome the exchange of ideas here. Isn’t it great that there’s a place where women can speak/comment freely without feeling judged and without being shouted down by the kind of men who populate political websites? I know Whiteknyght is male, but he always argues his points with intelligence, wit, and respect for others, so I have no problem with differing opinions and men participating, as long as we can all acknowledge our right to say what we believe without deliberately going after each other.
MLL, I know you think I’m an Obama fan, but I was a Hillary supporter and I do typically vote Democratic, and I have always had concerns about Obama’s lack of a significant record as an effective legislator. So I am looking hard at all candidates, including third party ones.
I’ve liked McCain in the past, but acquaintances who’ve worked with him directly in his home state have told me that his record in Arizona is abysmal with regard to women’s issues. And I really don’t want to see Roe v. Wade overturned. Call me a one-issue voter, but women’s reproductive rights are hugely important to me.
And it’s part of the public record (published in a book by a former McCain staffer, and witnessed by two others) that he called his wife the ‘C’ word publicly and demeaned her for caking on makeup on her face. That, combined with that very tasteles joke about a woman who was raped and nearly beaten to death by a gorilla and ‘enjoyed’ it, does bother me greatly. Call me thin-skinned (I’m not) but my mother always said, “Many a true word is spoken in jest.”
What happens in private deserves to remain private, but publicly calling one’s wife a ‘C’ in a public setting indicates someone who doesn’t respect women enough to edit himself. In all my life, my husband, my father, and none of my male friends have ever used that word in my presence in anger or in jest. It’s that bad.
And that, combined with the woman-who-enjoys-a-gorilla-raping-and-beating-her joke, is a deal breaker for me.