Tasteless Blast from Past: John McCain's Crude Chelsea Clinton Joke
<blockquote>Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno.</blockquote>
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/06/25newsb.html
Yup, that's what John McCain said about poor Chelsea back in 1998, when she was only 18 years old. It's so outrageously awful and so clearly beyond the pale that it makes Greg Sargent's effort to catalog unfair coverage of Hillary during the 2008 campaign look like an exercise in warm-fuzziness!
I hope everyone can try to help spread this article around the blogosphere. It was reported by David Corn at the time in Salon, and McCain did not deny it and apologized for it, including to Maureen Dowd in the N.Y. Times.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E6DD173CF932A15755C0A96E958260
That's what pure, unadulterated and awful sexist garbage McCain used to spew. How comfortable do Hilllary's supporters feel about that?
As Dowd reported, things have changed little since then:
<blockquote>He is so revered by the press that his disgusting jape was largely nudged under the rug. ''It's like a return to the Kennedy era,'' said one magazine editor. ''He makes a gaffe, and we look the other way.''
...
''This is the bad boy,'' he said in a phone interview. ''It was stupid and cruel and insensitive. I've apologized. I can't take it back. I could give you a whole bunch of excuses, but there are no excuses. I was wrong, but do you want me crucified? How many days does it need to be a story?''
He said the Senator who spoke just before he did to the Republican fat cats made a tasteless joke about Viagra. ''So I got up and said, 'You think that was a tasteless joke? Listen to this one.' The minute it came out of my mouth, I thought, 'Oh no, this is a terrible mistake.' ''
But, he added, defensively, ''I will always maintain a sense of humor. Life is too short not to.''
Life is also too short for making the President's daughter the target of a junky, misogynistic crack masquerading as humor.
Mr. McCain said he wrote a letter of abject apology to the President. That's good politics. But where's the letter to Janet Reno? He says he doesn't think that such a letter is necessary. </blockquote>




