Sorry folks, this was already diaried here. It looked new so I put it up.Clearly the "bomb, bomb Iran" fiasco didn't teach John McCain the lesson he should have learned from it--that he should leave the joking to others. In Jake Tapper's blog today, he reports on yet another tasteless McCain joke gaffe. This one is about--wait for it--wife beating. More below the fold.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was asked by columnist Jon Ralston why he didn't choose Gov. Jim Gibbons to chair his Nevada campaign.
"I appreciate his support," McCain said. "As you know, the lieutenant governor is our chairman."
Why snub the governor? Ralston asked.
"I didn’t mean to snub him,. I've known the lieutenant governor for 15 years and we've been good friends," McCain said. "I didn't intend to snub him. There are other states where the governor is not the chairman."
Maybe it's the governor's approval rating and you are running from him like you are from the president? Asked Ralston in a question McCain clearly found loaded.
Said McCain, chuckling, "And I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago."
Tapper points out that this is a badly-delivered reference to an old joke involving a reporter trying to entrap a Senator by saying, "When did you stop beating your wife?" However, McCain's joke was, shall we say, ill-timed as well as inapppropriate, as Tapper puts it into context:
Gov. Gibbons last month filed for divorce from his wife Dawn citing incompatiblity.
It's pretty scandalous. The Reno Gazette-Journal recently reported
that one month Gibbons sent 860 text messages to a woman with whome Mrs. Gibbons suspects her husband of stepping out.
Gibbons you may recall started his governorship amidst accusations that he assaulted a cocktail waitress named Chrissy Mazzeo three weeks before Election Day. Mazzeo said Gibbons grabbed her in a parking garage and threatened to sexually assault her. Charges were never filed.
Way to go, Johnny!