John McCain Is Not In Control Of John McCain
We’re pretty sure then that when he offered up his wife Cindy, who has graced Vogue this year and other magazines as one of the country’s most beautiful women, to compete in the rally’s Miss Buffalo Chip contest, that well, he didn’t entirely get — as an ESPN writer suggests — that the contestants sometimes wind up topless, walk about in thongs (Shocking!) or are otherwise scantily clothed. (Oh! Debauchery!)
Or maybe he did and was just having a little fun.
“I told her with a little luck that she could be the only woman to serve as First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip,” Mr. McCain told the crowd, as his wife waved to them. (To laughter from the audience, we might add.)
[...]
For Mr. and Mrs. McCain, it was just one campaign stop — and a very short one — during a long long year or more. We’re inclined to go along with Senator McCain’s joshing, and have the sense that this was all in good fun. But the McCain clip is another example of how a throw-away line at a campaign pit-stop can live on and on online.
Good for you!
...Idiot.
So, not only is John McCain not responsible for his campaign (those pesky advisers and all), he should also be exempted from responsibility for offering up his wife in a glorified public sex show because campaigning is really hard.
If John McCain stabbed a Girl Scout in the face, at least the Washington Post would be able to publish its long-awaited series, "How Little Girls Are Magnets For Knives".
H/T.
UPDATE: As an addendum, candidates pay people to know things like what the Buffalo Chip contest is. They're called an "advance team".
For a long time, the media infatuation with shoving women back in the kitchen where they belong has been justified through the cutesy euphemism "stay-at-home-mom" instead of the classic description "housewife". The fantasy of dependent womanhood had a feminist justification---she's staying at home raising the children, The Most Important Job In The World.* The "opt-out revolution" trend stories were not based in reality, but a strong kind of reactionary wish fulfillment---you get to have it both ways. You get to have that sparkling, intelligent and ambitious woman to marry, but you also get the housewife after you knock her up and the stress of throwing all those balls in the air causes her to give in and submit. But the baby was the key to transforming your woman from a career lady to a housewife through the power of euphemism. The fact that most housewives really do leave the workforce when the amount of childcare work at home exceeds what they can juggle (because they have most childcare duties whether they have outside work or not) justified the whole thing, because criticizing the stories was taken as criticizing the women who make this decision under a series of massive pressures. That there was no evidence of any such trend mattered not one bit. 
Between shoving Bush into speaking on Labor Day, 
Big Pharma is standing in the way of male birth control medication because they say