Thanks to Paul Krugman for pointing out a Cindy McCain quote that, to my mind, is even better than John McCain not knowing how many houses he and his wife own. When asked about having a private pilot's license and owning a private plane, Cindy McCain answered:
"The only way to get around Arizona is by small private plane."
You can actually see and hear Cindy saying this nonsense here. Cindy sent me to Google maps to see if my memory of Arizona was somehow faulty and Arizona was actually as big and roadless as Alaska, where such a statement might make sense. To my relief, I found that I wasn't suffering from early onset Alzheimer's after all.
From the McCains' home (a word I use advisedly for somebody who has 7 or ll or some other big number of them) in Phoenix, it's 235 miles to Douglas, in the far southeast corner or the state, 185 miles to Yuma in the far southwest corner of the state, and 144 miles to Flagstaff in the northern portion of the state. Even to the tiny community of Many Farms, on the Navajo Reservation in the northeast corner of the state, it's only 369 miles. (And note, all of these distances are by highway, not direct point-to-point.)
And yet Barack and Michelle Obama are the "elitists?" Can you imagine the derision from right-wing talk radio and Faux News if Barack Obama claimed "the only way to get around Illinois is by small private plane," because of the distance from Chicago to Sprinfield (201 miles), Edwardsville (277 miles), or Cairo (374 miles)?
Unless McCain is making astoundingly regular trips to the Navajo or Hopi Reservations, he's not even going to places significantly more distant than Maryland's Senators need to travel from Baltimore to get to Ocean City (145 miles), Oakland (195 miles).
Not only doesn't McCain know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis and think Iraq borders on Pakistan, he (or at least his wife) have apparently confused the geography of Arizona with that of Alaska. Either that, or they're the real elitists and are too ashamed of their lifestyle to admit that they've got lots of expensive toys and want them simply because they like them and can well afford them. I've frankly got no problem with that, but for the Republicans to then try to paint the OBAMAS as "elitists" can only be described as breathtakingly hypocritical.