Meghan McCain

In a panel discussion on today's Now with Alex Wagner about what "moral authority," if any, that the Occupy Wall Street movement has, MSNBC contributor Melissa Harris-Perry sought to defuse fellow panelist Meghan McCain's complaint that Occupy Wall Street has hurt the very folks it claims to represent by killing jobs at businesses nearby Zuccotti Park.

"If a Tea Party rally had shut down a business that had to let go of 21 workers, there would probably be a different reaction from a lot of people in the media," McCain observed.

Harris-Perry initially dismissed McCain's comment by noting the "deeply polarized media system," where conservatives and liberals gravitate to different news sources based on ideology. But a few minutes later the Tulane professor groused that we as a society don't view budget-related layoffs of public sector workers through a moral prism (emphases mine):

A week after HBO's Bill Maher called Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich "a fat womanizing blowhard," NBC's Jay Leno referred to the former House Speaker as a "hot air balloon."

Tonight Show guest Meghan McCain actually thought that was funny (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There were two candidates on the GOP ticket in 2008, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Both had young daughters involved in the campaign. Both have written books about the experience. Guess which book was celebrated and which was savaged?

The media's character assassination of Sarah Palin knows no bounds, as she's been smeared as everything from "evil" to "unintelligent." But "Palin Derangement Syndrome" is a hereditary disease, and the media have continued their multigenerational malice toward Bristol Palin in reviews of her new memoir, "Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far."

(Video after the jump)

Ever notice how liberals trot out pseudo-profundities when talking about guns?

Latest example -- MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on her show Friday night, hanging out with Meghan McCain at the NRA convention in Pittsburgh.

NRA member McCain said that as a young woman and daughter of a prominent politician, she owns a gun to protect herself from those seeking harm (video linked here) --

MSNBC loves to interview and pamper Meghan McCain to stir up trouble in the Republican Party. Rachel Maddow honored her on January 17 as the "very reasonable" Meghan McCain, the "unwilling irritant to her own beloved Republican Party."

It happened again on Wednesday night's Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. The graphic behind him read "MIND OF McCAIN," as if the audience were about to be treated to a very impressive mind, indeed. Viewers were instead treated to another strange episode of the bratty Daily Beast columnist doing a Superiority Dance, raining fire on conservative women, in this case, Michele Bachmann. CNN "should be ashamed" of putting her speech on, and the Tea Party should have picked a male, instead:

"Michelle Bachmann, in my opinion, is no better than a poor man's Sarah Palin. And the fact that Fox and MSNBC elected not to air this, I think is admirable, the kind of journalism Fox and MSNBC is airing. I think CNN should be ashamed of themselves for airing this. It is one rogue woman who couldn't even look into the camera directly, and I take none of it seriously. And I think if the Tea Party wants to put a candidate up to give a response, why don't they have someone like Rand Paul, who was elected on the Tea Party platform, give that?"

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow offered this jaw-dropping sentence on Tuesday night: “We love to have conservatives on this show. We really, really, really do. Last night, Meghan McCain was nice enough to come by. And incredibly, nobody was injured or even angered.”

Maddow must be joking. Meghan McCain, who was rushed on to ABC on Sunday for writing, among other things, “Rather than leading us into the exhilarating fresh air of liberty, a chorus of voices on the radical right is taking us to a place of intolerance and anger.”

There was no anger on the MSNBC set because Maddow and Ms. McCain agree on nearly everything, as viewers could see in two segments last 12 and a half minutes. If Maddow truly loved having conservatives on, she would have let someone debate young McCain. She constantly plays the victim of vicious conservatives.

“With just 16 days left, it is getting nasty out there,” ABC reporter David Kerley asserted Sunday night, scolding Republican Senator John McCain because on the campaign trail he “dropped senatorial decorum and viciously attacked a Democratic colleague.” On Saturday, in California, McCain said he’s “had the unpleasant experience of having to serve” with Senator Barbara Boxer.

Kerley, however, expressed less angst over McCain’s daughter, Meghan, insulting Christine O’Donnell as “a nut job.” Kerley simply noted how “the Senator's daughter also went on the attack, but she slammed a fellow Republican, Christine O'Donnell, a Tea Party favorite running for Senate in Delaware.”

Meghan McCain got star treatment on the front of the Sunday Styles section hyping "Dirty Sexy Politics," her thin little account of her father's 2008 presidential campaign. Frequent Times contributor Liesl Schillinger's 2,600-word profile ("The Rebel") of the 25-year-old daughter of Sen. John McCain  reads like a parody at times, so over-the-top is the praise for what sounds like an incredibly shallow read.

Of course, McCain is the Times's favorite kind of Republican, a surprisingly uninformed "progressive" whose arguments won't convince anyone except shilling Schillingers.

On a sweltering 109-degree August day, driving past election signs (John McCain, J. D. Hayworth, Ben Quayle) and cacti (saguaro), I pulled into a roadside mini-mall, hoping it was the right one. Entering a barnlike Mexican restaurant called Blanco, I scanned the bright blue banquettes for Meghan McCain.

Ms. McCain, the 25-year-old politics and pop-culture columnist for The Daily Beast and daughter of Senator John McCain, is also the author of the just-published "Dirty Sexy Politics," a frank, dishy and often scathing chronicle of her experiences during the 2008 presidential campaign. Her book is not only a front-row view of one of the most historic elections in recent American history, it is, as she told George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning America," a "coming-of-age story."

She's the heir to the House of Maverick - the Republican the liberal media establishment can love, who's just as embarrassed by those icky conservatives as any network anchor or newspaper columnist.

Like her senator and erstwhile presidential candidate dad John, Meghan McCain is a willing weapon for the media to use against her fellow Republicans. But unlike "the Maverick," there's little chance she'd ever be a threat to the real good guys - liberal Democrats. 

To Washington Post Nonfiction Books Editor Steven Levingston, Meghan McCain is a "free-thinking college grad" (she's educated, you see; she's one of us) joyfully bucking what she calls conservative "groupthink."

In the Sept. 1 Post, Levingston reviewed "Dirty Sexy Politics," McCain's memoir of her father's 2008 presidential campaign. The book, he wrote, "is as much a scathing critique of the Republican Party as it is a passionate tale of life on the campaign trail." And Levingston proceeded to relate that critique with undisguised relish.

"McCain takes repeated jabs at the intolerant ethos of today's Republicans," Levingston wrote. "She rails at feeling left out: The party, she says, has been hijacked by the right wing and has rejected - to its detriment - the moderate politics that she and millions of other young conservatives espouse."

Because she dresses trashy, swears like a sailor and "has gay friends," McCain has run afoul of the "intolerant ethos of today's Republicans."

ABC's George Stephanopoulos interviewed media darling and nominal Republican Meghan McCain on Tuesday's Good Morning America and devoted the bulk of the segment to her love-hate relationship with Sarah Palin and her daughter Bristol. Stephanopoulos devoted so much time to the Palin issue that McCain interjected, "For the record, my book is not just about Sarah and Bristol."

The anchor gushingly endorsed the McCain daughter's new book, "Dirty Sexy Politics," at the beginning of the interview, which aired 42 minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour: "It is savvy, it is saucy, and it's just what you'd expect from the first daughter of a presidential candidate ever fired by her father's campaign." He then labeled his guest a "fun writer" and first asked about her "firing," in which she actually sent away from the main stops of her father's presidential campaign and did a bus tour in the battleground state of Ohio.

With all the conservative columnists out there, if you were looking for an author to represent the right-wing view in a new Crossfire-like program, would you choose Kathleen Parker who lately has largely presented herself as a Republican In Name Only? 

According to the New York Post, that's exactly what CNN is considering.

Not only that, but her liberal opponent is rumored to be -- wait for it! -- disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.

Here's what the Post published Friday concerning this matter:

CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference begins Feb. 18. Conservative leaders will rally the troops before the mid-term elections in November and discuss the future role of conservatives in politics.

One person who will not be in attendance is Meghan McCain, despite the year-long media attempt to make citizens believe she is somehow representative of conservatives. She tweeted on Feb. 11, "I have no idea where this weird rumor I am speaking at CPAC came from, it isn't true and I will not be attending or speaking."

McCain, the 25-year-old daughter of former Republican presidential nominee John McCain and a writer for The Daily Beast, has taken it upon herself to tell the GOP what needs to be fixed within the party. Because she calls herself a Republican, media outlets have perpetuated the notion that she is also conservative. By doing that, they've pushed a liberal social agenda that directly conflicts with conservative values.

Writer Kathleen Parker, herself no stranger to conservative bashing, praised McCain last spring as "one smart cookie" who "in a matter weeks ... has created a brand, presenting herself as a fresh face of her daddy's party and voice of young conservatives."

Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post and a contributor to MSNBC, suggested last summer that "maybe what the Republican Party is going to have to do is skip a generation and wait for the Meghan McCains to come of age so they can run for office and take over the mantle of the party."

On Tuesday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann highlighted suggestions by former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo that there should be civics literacy testing for registered voters made at the recent Tea Party convention, which Olbermann referred to as the "Tea Klux Klan," and painted Tea Party activists as wanting to deny minorities the right to vote using the tactics of the Jim Crow South. As if Tancredo wanted to discriminate against African-American voters, Olbermann referred to "Tancredo harking back fondly to the electoral strategies once used to keep poor people – specifically, explicitly, black people – from voting."

After bringing aboard the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson for further discussion, Olbermann’s first question employed the premise that "mainstream Republicans" wish to discriminate against minorities:

If you ever thought mainstream Republicans would openly reminisce about race-based election stealing, did you ever think that you would, as a grown man in the 21st century, see the once proud Republican party let it happen with the only kind of peep of integrity coming from the daughter of a Senator?

Robinson charged that Tea Party members were displaying "naked Jim Crow racism." Robinson:

Just minutes after her colleague David Shuster offered a tepid non-apology for the network running a fake Rush Limbaugh quote, MSNBC's Tamron Hall took Meghan McCain to task for posting a saucy picture of herself on Twitter and also for issuing to followers a non-apology apology for those offended by her doing so.

As my colleague Kyle Drennen noted earlier, at 3:40 p.m. EDT today, Shuster issued a non-apology "clarification" of sorts about his network's peddling of an unverified Rush Limbaugh quote:

MSNBC attributed that quote to a football player who was opposed to Limbaugh’s NFL bid. However, we have been unable to verify that quote independently. So, just to clarify.

Oblivious perhaps to the hypocrisy she was about to engage in, a mere fifteen minutes later colleague Tamron Hall, in her "Crossing the Line" segment, lectured Daily Beast columnist Meghan McCain for posting, and then issuing a non-apology apology for posting, a sultry picture of herself via Twitter (emphasis mine; MP3 audio available here):

The ladies on ABC’s The View were unanimous on Thursday: the Republicans were rude to President Obama. Sitting in Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s chair was Meghan McCain, who said Rep. Joe Wilson’s shout "makes all Republicans look bad." Joy Behar said the Republicans were "pretty disgraceful," Sherri Shepherd boasted she "stayed up all night," pestering Wilson’s office for an apology, and Whoopi Goldberg said it was "incredibly disrespectful," just like opponents of the president’s "State of the Child address" to schools.

Barbara Walters was milder, decrying how Obama should be met across the aisle, a nonpartisan peacemaker pleading like a political version of Rodney King: "The president said, and I'm quoting here, ‘If you've got a better plan, I want to listen. This is not perfect. Please, can we get together?’"

Behar began the discussion of Obama’s speech: "Well, I enjoyed it. I thought he was back to his old charismatic self and he got in touch with his, his anger. I thought that the Republicans were pretty disgraceful in the way that they acted. That's my opinion."

This raises the obvious question: Which assertion is more impolite? Wilson saying Obama lied? Or Joy Behar suggesting Republicans conspired to give Sen. Tim Johnson a stroke?

On Thursday, MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer reported on Meghan McCain calling Joe the Plumber a "dumb ass" for his views on homosexuality and remarked: "Is that name calling? Or, you know, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck. Just asking, folks. I'm just asking." [audio available here]

In the brief report, during the 2:00PM ET hour, Brewer explained:

Let's go to the war of words between Meghan McCain and the man known as Joe the Plumber. In a recent interview, the daughter of the former GOP presidential contender railed against her dad's big supporter here. And she was talking about her support for gay marriage, she criticized Samuel Wurzelbacher, that’s his real name, his comments about homosexuals. She said – this is – okay, these are her words, I’m going to quote them, ‘Joe the Plumber, you can quote me, is a dumb ass, he should stick to plumbing.’ Is that name calling? Or, you know, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck. Just asking, folks. I'm just asking.

In the wake of the revelations about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, considered a potential 2012 GOP presidential contender, Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart declared on MSNBC: “Maybe what the Republican Party is going to have to do is skip a generation and wait for the Meghan McCains to come of age so that they can run for office and take over the mantle of the party.” Capehart proceeded to pass along “a little joke” from Post colleague Charles Lane who “said at the rate Republicans are going, the only marriages that will be worth anything are the gay folks getting married in Vermont.”

At about 3:13 PM EDT, anchor Tamron Hall prompted Capehart's comments as she raised the name of the liberal younger McCain in forwarding the view the party must move left: “We've seen a lot of young Republicans, Meghan McCain and some others who've come out and said listen, this party has to modernize. They can no longer turn their backs on gays and tout family values as the way in.”

On Monday’s Tonight Show on NBC, Jay Leno incorrectly called New York’s former Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer a Republican during the show’s monologue as he joked about Republican sex scandals. Inspired by John McCain’s daughter Meghan’s recent declaration that she is a "pro-sex Republican," Leno used her comment to poke fun at Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, as well as Democrat Spitzer, who were both revealed to have hired prostitutes. But Leno’s joke assumed both disgraced politicians were Republicans: "Don’t confuse that with other Republicans like Senator Vitter and Eliot Spitzer. They like to get their sex from a pro."

If Leno was confused about Spitzer's party affiliation, it is hardly surprising, as the MRC’s Brent Baker previously documented the mainstream media’s reluctance to label Spitzer as a Democrat, and Rich Noyes documented the media’s greater willingness to label Republicans involved in sex scandals.

Below is the complete text of Leno’s joke from the Monday, May 25, Tonight Show on NBC:

Meghan McCain was again provided with a national outlet for her "moderate" Republican views with her appearance on "The Colbert Report" on May 18. Host Stephen Colbert said to her, "You're more liberal than President Obama. Is that how you see the future of Republican Party going?"

"I'm liberal on social issues," McCain responded

Later in the interview McCain explained her views: "All I'm trying to say is it can be a party for a 24-year-old pro-sex woman. It can be. I just think that we have people that are in this party that are hijacking it and - trying to make it more extreme."

A self described "pro-sex, pro-life and pro-gay marriage" Republican, McCain would prefer the Republican Party stray away from abstinence only education and drop its support for the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

The line of liberal journalists waiting to give the GOP free advice on its future is longer than the queue for Jonas Brothers concert tickets and at least 100 times more petulant than the 'tweens lined up for same.

U.S. News & World Report contributing editor and PBS "To the Contrary" host Bonnie Erbe, for example, has been on a tear in recent weeks. Whether it's hyping Meghan McCain as a fresh voice for the GOP or praising Bristol Palin as more mature than her mother, Erbe has done little to hide her disdain for social conservatives in the Republican Party that can actually form their arguments without coming off like a vapid valley girl whining about, like, creepy old guys like Karl Rove.

Well, in an April 30 Thomas Jefferson Street blog post Erbe urged GOP chairman Michael Steele to abort the Republican Party's coalition with religious conservatives:

Well, that's one vote for Meghan McCain for Republican Party chairman. Too bad it's from a radical feminist columnist and blogger who insists that abortion is a "good decision" in the midst of a recession.

That's right, US News & World Report contributing editor Bonnie Erbe hacked out a short blog yesterday -- appropriately on 4/20, as if to answer the question, "What exactly is she smoking?" -- in which she praises the Daily Beast columnist and daughter of the Arizona Sen. John McCain as the future of the GOP:

Although Meghan McCain can sometimes come off a bit, shall we say, different, she gave a speech at the Log Cabin Republicans meeting this weekend that shows she has a brain and represents the views of lots and lots of young people and young members of the GOP.

[...]

"MSNBC News Live" host Contessa Brewer on Monday speculated as to whether the liberal-leaning Meghan McCain could become "the voice of the Republican Party." Brewer, who was talking to Washington Times reporter Christina Bellantoni about the daughter of the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, ignored the fact that Ms. McCain has admitted she supported Democrats John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000. [audio available here]

Instead, referencing the 24-year-old blogger's speech to the Log Cabin Republicans on Saturday, Brewer queried, "...Is it time for the Republican Party to be more inclusive of people from all different orientations?" She then asked Bellantoni, "...We talk about Limbaugh, Michael Steele, Sarah Palin, is it possible Meghan McCain becomes the voice of the Republican Party?" How bizarre is it that Brewer was asking if a woman who supported Gore and Kerry, and spoke to an organization of gay Republicans that refused to endorse George W. Bush in 2004, will one day lead the GOP? (In her latest Daily Beast blog, McCain attacked the "creepy" Karl Rove.)

ABC’s World News programs on Friday and Sunday highlighted "frank comments by Republicans" who indicated either an admission to having reservations over, or who called on a reversal of, the Republican party’s conservative stance on social issues. On Friday, Charles Gibson informed viewers that Sarah Palin confessed before a pro-life group to having briefly wondered about having an abortion after she discovered her son Trig would be born with Down’s Syndrome. Gibson also highlighted comments by Steve Schmidt, the former campaign manager for John McCain, as he addressed a gathering of the Log Cabin Republicans and "urged the Republican party to support same-sex marriage."

On World News Sunday, correspondent Rachel Martin filed a full story on pro-gay comments by both Schmidt and John McCain’s daughter Meghan. Anchor Dan Harris introduced the report: "There are some new and rather surprising voices wading into the debate over same-sex marriage. Last night, John McCain's daughter, Meghan, jumped into the fray, and she is not the only Republican suggesting that the party might want to reconsider its stance on this very divisive issue."

Martin began her report with a a clip of Meghan McCain boasting that she has many gay friends, and the ABC correspondent then continued: "The daughter of the GOP's most famous maverick headlined a Republican gay rights event, and, while she didn't go so far as to come out for gay marriage, her dad's former campaign manager did. ... even taking on the powerful religious right."

One has to hand it to Meghan McCain. She has certainly found the perfect shtick for extending herself beyond her allotted 15 minutes of fame. And the method Meghan has discovered is to slam conservative Republicans. That is her meal ticket to getting invites on cable news shows such as Larry King and, "OMG," she is also going to be guest co-host of The View for a couple of days this week. Think any of these invitations would have materialized had Meghan urged Republicans to become more conservative? If that were to happen all those TV appearances plus her new book deal would dry up more quickly than a drop of water in Death Valley.

One important measure of Meghan McCain's "success" is that she is now being quoted favorably in the Huffington Post.  HuffPo blogger, Sam Stein, expressed his approval of her in his latest blog post: Meghan McCain: "Old School" Republicans Are "Scared Sh--less."

Kathleen Parker, a "conservative" columnist who has discovered that slamming real conservatives was an easy way to lift herself from her earlier state of relative anonymity, has now turned herself into an inadvertent comedienne. I mean, how can you beat this comedy line on the title of her latest column appearing in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel: "Is Meghan McCain the GOP's answer to Rush Limbaugh?" Yes, Parker is seriously proposing that "Valley Girl McCain" can save the Republicans from that "nasty" Rush Limbaugh:

The GOP's identity crisis just got more interesting with the recent media splash of Meghan McCain, eldest daughter of the senator who did not become president.

Young McCain, who began blogging during her father's presidential campaign, recently made waves at The Daily Beast when she picked a fight with conservative media mavens Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. This is enough sport to make the little dog laugh, to say nothing of the dish and the spoon.

McCain, just 24, is one smart cookie. In a matter of weeks, she has created a brand, presenting herself as a fresh face of her daddy's party and a voice for young conservatives. Strategically speaking, what better way to launch herself than to challenge the reigning diva herself, Miz Coulter?

Madonna, meet Britney.

For the record, Laura Ingraham never actually called Meghan McCain fat. However, Ingraham has been dead on hilarious in her imitation of Meghan's mindless sounding Valley Girl accent. A quick listen to Ms McCain's voice on this video clip of her appearance on CNN's Larry King Live last night brought back memories of the years your humble correspondent spent in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, birthplace of the Valley Girl accent which, unfortunately, spread to many parts of the country. That Valspeak accent still painfully reverberates in my ears yet despite my earnest hope that it would die a permanent death, along comes Meghan McCain to resurrect that annoying sound in interview after interview in her quest for eternal publicity for herself.

So how does someone who sounds so annoyingly vacuous rate so much publicity? Simple. When a Republican (or relative of a prominent Republican) slams Republicans and/or conservatives, such a person will be enthusiastically given a national forum by the MSM. Even someone like John McCain's daughter who doesn't really sound all that interested in political issues. As you can see in this interview, Valley Girl McCain seems much more enthusiastic rambling on about how she was supposedly "dissed" by Laura Ingraham and carefully pondering which tattoo to choose for her wrist. First Larry plays a video clip of Barack Obama laughing while discussing the economic crises during his 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft then asks Meghan for her "learned" input:

Former Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain's daughter Meghan has four words of advice for conservative radio host Laura Ingraham: "Kiss my fat ass!" [h/t Jeff Poor]

Appearing on the March 16 edition of "The View," The Daily Beast columnist told the gals of "The View" that she was annoyed with Ingraham for recently making a joke about her weight.

McCain: Why are we so obsessed with weight? Why? And I know specifically for me, this is so, you know I'm a pop culture junkie, but when Tyra Banks went on her show in her bathing suit and said, "Kiss my fat ass," that's what I feel like right now. I'm like, "kiss my fat ass!"

At the top of the 8 a.m. EST hour of Tuesday's CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez teased an upcoming interview with John McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain: "And young Mac attack. Senator McCain's daughter, Meghan, takes aim at conservative Ann Coulter and tells us about her post-election dating issues." Later, co-host Harry Smith opened the segment by declaring: "Senator John McCain's daughter, Meghan, has left the campaign trail and found herself working in the blogosphere as a writer for The Daily Beast. And on it she has written some tough things about Ann Coulter as well as her ongoing search for Mr. Right, or Mr. Far Right."

After Smith asked her about her "search for Mr. Far Right," he turned his attention to her recent criticism of conservative author Ann Coulter: "Well here's one of the things you wrote about Ann Coulter, who's been a guest on this program in the past, we had interesting conversations, ‘I straight up don't understand this woman or her popularity. I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time. If figureheads like Ann Coulter are turning me off, then they are definitely turning off other members of my generation as well.’" McCain replied: "And I think it's hard for me to explain to my friends that are in their 20s, when these icons of the party say radical things. I have a friend that's Jewish. She made anti-Semitic comments. It's hard to defend-" Smith interjected: "The Jews need to be perfected and stuff like that." McCain replied: "Yeah, which obviously, I completely disagree with and think is crazy."