Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:45 pm
As many of you know Sen. John McCain’s daughter Megan has been involved in a feud with conservative pariah Ann Coulter, which spawned a sub feud with talk show host Laura Ingraham, who criticized Ms. McCain’s weight, which led to McCain going on The View today and absolutely destroying Ingraham.
It was an act of genius for McCain to go The View. Here is the video courtesy of ThinkProgress:
McCain was guaranteed a sympathetic audience by going on The View. Ms. McCain said, “The worst part about it for me is that with my personal blog a significant majority of the readers are young women…What do young women think when I want to speak my mind about politics, and I want to have a political discussion about the ideological future of the Republican Party, and the answer is she’s fat, she shouldn’t have an opinion. What kind of message are we sending young women?” She added, “I am a political writer on a blog, and all of the sudden I am too fat to write.”
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Ms. McCain also paraphrased Tyra Banks and told Ingraham to kiss her fat ass, “When Tyra Banks went on her show in her bathing suit and said, “Kiss my fat ass.” That’s what I feel right now. I’m like “Kiss my fat ass!” Ingraham replied today by calling her insults satire, “But look the bottom line is it’s rough and tumble out there. You wanna put yourself out there as someone who’s going to redirect the future of the Republican Party, and you’re going to have to deal with satire. You’re gonna have to deal with people teasing. You’re gonna have to deal with, you know, sometimes the kitchen gets a little hot! …. You gotta just take a chill pill. … Can I say lighten up or is that offensive too?”
Let’s call this exchange what it really is. This is a version of political payback by the right wingers for John McCain’s 2008 election defeat. The problem for Coulter and Ingraham is that Megan McCain is proving herself to be smarter and more politically savvy, then these so called conservative opinion leaders. Laura Ingraham just got her head handed to her by a 24 year old blogger. The majority movement in the Republican Party currently is to purge the moderates such as Michael Steele and Megan McCain, and then shift more to the right.
Insulting McCain’s weight is not satire or political discussion. It is a cheap shot, designed to emotionally injure. I am going to bet that McCain picked up a ton of new readers and supporters by defending women and girls who don’t have perfect bodies. Ingraham has done McCain a huge favor, she may have thought that she was talking tough, but the end result for her will be continued criticism and scorn. Ingraham has always been on the conservative talker (B) team, and this incident will likely move her further down the depth chart.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
