By Kathy G.
Sadly, it's slim pickings this week for the McCain Tabloid Watch. The Globe has a promising headline on the cover: "John McCain goes BESERK!" But it's not their most prominent story -- not only is it buried beneath the lead story, "DORIS DAY BETRAYED!", but it's also placed under the head of a second story: "EXPOSED! OBAMA'S RUTHLESS WIFE! She controls EVERYTHING he does," complete with photos of a fierce-looking Michelle and a frightened-looking Barack (and yes, the tabs do need to cool it with the all caps).
And btw, when it comes to Michelle, y'all better get ready for endless variations on the the Sapphire stereotype. 'Cause that's all we'll be hearing about Michelle from here to eternity. Other than the fact that she's a "bitter" dirty fucking hippy who hates white people and hates America, of course.
Back to McCain . . . when you open up the paper to read the story itself, you'll see that the headline is "CRUEL & CRUDE JOHN McCAIN ATTACKED WIFE" ("ATTACKED WIFE" is in red). It's accompanied by a scary-looking picture of a snarling McCain, who's balling up his fist like he's about to slug someone. As I said, it looks promising. Alas, the article itself is a letdown. It basically recycles the story of St. Johnny calling his wife Cindy a trollop and cunt, which has already been widely circulated around the left-wing blogosphere.
But now that I've mentioned it -- here are a couple of things that seriously bother me about that anecdote(beyond the obvious ones, of course). What McCain said was, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt" (in the Globe story, "cunt" is decorously represented as "****"). This is a rather extraordinary thing to say. WTF is up with that "At least I don't plaster on the makeup" bullshit? Does Johnny boy think he deserves to be showered with praise for his brave refusal to trowel on the foundation? Does he see his refusal to wear makeup as some sort of heroic sacrifice? It really is a more-than-passing-strange type thing to say. Unless, of course, you believe McCain secretly "enjoys being a girl" with "a pound and a half of cream" upon his face.
The "cunt" remark is also exactly the kind of thing that a certain type of sexist asshole would say. You know the kind of jerk I'm talking about -- if a woman doesn't wear makeup or take a great deal of care with her appearance, he'll scream that she's a hairy man-hating lezbo. And if she does, he'll call her a vain, frivolous, cunty little trollope. What a wonderfully self-revealing comment that was on McSame's part. Yeah, and if Cindy did eschew the makeup, I'm sure he'd be thrilled.
One more point to make before going back to the Globe article -- as Whiskey Fire's Molly Ivors has pointed out, at the time McCain made that vicious remark, poor Cindy was a drug-addicted basket case. Niiiiice.
Okay, back to the Globe story. Besides the "cunt" anecdote -- or the "****" anecdote, as the Globe renders it -- the article also discusses McCain's legendary "foul mouth and vicious, hair-trigger temper." It references the "McNasty" nickname he had in high school, and also notes that McCain "is said to have swapped punches with another member of the Senate!" Doesn't mention which senator though, unfortunately.
And that is pretty much it. The one nice thing is that it does give credit to Cliff Schecter's book, The Real McCain, which is the source of the "cunt" anecdote. And they even quote Schecter in the article. So those are some well-deserved props for one of the left blogosphere's own, and for the book itself, which I hear is a great read and a persuasively scary dissection of the man who is its subject.
I also think it's great that tabloid readers are being exposed to these stories. I have no idea to what degree these anti-McCain circulate beyond the confines of the left blogosphere, so any additional attention they get in other outlets is welcome.
But overall, the story didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. So sadly, on my patented Bat Boy tabloid rating system (explained here), I will only give this story:
out of
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