McCain’s Wife-Beating Joke
McCain made another monumental gaffe today during an interview in Nevada. The interviewer was obviously trying to nail McCain (and a pretty sophomoric effort at that) with some fairly loaded questions.
The interviewer was trying to insinuate that some recent campaign appointments by McCain in Nevada was a snub at the Republican governor. McCain denied the accusation, but the interviewer had more to say on the matter.
Q:Maybe it’s the governor’s approval rating and you are running from him like you are from the president?
McCain: (Chuckling) And I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago!
This is hardly an example of the inept interviewer “nailing” McCain so much as it is McCain displaying an ill-formed sense of humor. Jake Tapper at Political Punch gives a little bit of clarification:
To be clear, McCain was alluding to the fictitious leading question “When did you stop beating your wife, senator?” It’s a bit of distasteful DC yuckery so commonly quoted it’s hackneyed.
Not much of a defense but it is probably McCain’s attempt to have a sense of humor in the face of some fairly gross accusations.
Normally, I wouldn’t bother to blog such an immaterial statement since it doesn’t do much in terms of clarifying issues or agendas; however this does give us some interesting insight into the man. I’m not going to say McCain is sexist, though there is some fairly good evidence to support that. However, this quote will likely to be taken out of context again and again. Going to hurt him with those Clinton supporters he is trying to court.
It is his own fault really, and that he finds his own comment funny is what shoved his foot in his mouth. Had McCain replied, “The questions you have are about as substantial as the allegations that I beat my wife,” it would have been a golden opportunity to turn tables on the interviewer. That he turned introspective and showed a morbid humor is only going to make him seem like the type of chest thumping male who finds spousal abuse funny.
Many people don’t find it funny.
-Marc-
I’m a Democrat, but I have a grandfather McCain’s age, and I can tell you exactly what he was referring to. There’s an old joke about a man who’s being interviewed on TV, and the interviewer asks a series of loaded questions, ending with, “And when did you stop beating your wife?”
The joke, of course, is that there’s no good answer to the question.
McCain obviously felt that the interviewer was, like the interviewer in the joke, simply trying to trap him– which, according to this blog, she was.
I find the reference funny, having heard the joke from my grandfather many times.
Sure there’s a good answer to that question. Sir, I have never beaten my wife, and if you continue to suggest that I have, I shall be forced to pursue legal recourse.
Marc when did you get a stick up your ass?
Oh, I don’t really care so much as I was just pointing out that old joke or no, its bad politics to be using it when you called your wife a trollop and a c*%t.