MSNBC's David Shuster has earned an appropriate dose of condemnation and outrage for his disgusting assertion that Chelsea Clinton had been "pimped out" by her parents for political purposes.
Now is a good time to remember that before there was a David Shuster, there was John McCain.
Ten years ago, McCain told a cruel joke about Chelsea to a group of Republicans:
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno."
This joke is vile in more ways than I count. Chelsea is and was beautiful -- not that it should even matter. It's never acceptable to make a joke like that, but the fact that Chelsea was a teenager at the time makes it even worse.
The joke wasn't merely sexist and mean, it was also homophobic. It is a brutal indictment of John McCain's personal character -- and the character of those who laughed along with him.
And the media let him get away with it.
As David Corn observed at the time, "journalists" mostly covered up the joke:
Earlier this month, at a Republican Senate fund-raiser, McCain told a downright nasty joke making fun of Janet Reno, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton.
The fact that McCain had made the tasteless joke was reported in major newspapers, as was the vain attempt by his press secretary to initially deny what McCain had done. But in several major newspapers, the joke itself was kept a secret. When McCain subsequently apologized to President Clinton, the Washington Post, in its personality section, noted the apology but said the joke "was too vicious to print."
The Los Angeles Times, in its Life & Style section, provided an oblique rendering of the joke that did not fully convey its ugliness. When Maureen Dowd penned a column in the New York Times about the joke, she wrote that McCain "is so revered by the press that his disgusting jape was largely nudged under the rug." But Dowd chose not to relay the joke, either.
The joke did appear in McCain's hometown paper, the Arizona Republic, and the Associated Press did report the joke in full, so everyone in the press had access to McCain's words. But by censoring themselves, the Post, the Times and others helped McCain deflect flak and preserved his status as a Republican presidential contender.
For all the lovejobs that McCain is about to get from the media in the coming year, don't forget that he's also the kind of man who thought nothing of ridiculing a beautiful teenage girl's appearance in order to make a homophobic joke.
They say that what makes McCain different is his character. But what kind of character must he have to have made this joke?
And what does it say about journalists that they let him get away with it?
(Update: No words changed, but I added emphasis to a point I made in the intro.)
