Teddy hit this earlier, but it’s hard to know how much contempt is too much to have for a man who’d offer up his wife to fellate bananas, expose her breasts, and bend over for a leering crowd of bikers. Wait. Actually it’s not. Megan Carpentier captures it perfectly:

And, let’s be frank, he didn’t do it just because she’s pretty or has an enviable body for a 54-year-old woman or because he’s proud of his wife’s brand of socialite beauty. He did it to pander to the crowd’s idea of appropriate masculinity, and that apparently includes over-sexualizing your wife and the mother of your children for the amusement of a few people in a crowd. McCain offered up the thought of his wife objectifying herself for the sexual gratification of others (at his suggestion) in order to get a couple of chuckles, inspire some male fantasy and make a few "friends." Fun!

And you might say that John McCain didn’t think of it as an objectification ritual, or that he didn’t know that it involved nudity and displays of stimulated sex acts or whatever. Well, then, why wasn’t he offering to get his very pretty daughter Meghan up on stage? Suggesting a 24-year-old woman participate in a just-a-beauty pageant wouldn’t be so outside the the norm, if he thought it would be just a beauty pageant. But he knew that it wasn’t, and he doesn’t think of his daughter in that way and wouldn’t in a million years as a father suggest or even intimate that his daughter should get on stage and flash her breasts, ass and (potentially) her external genitalia at a group of strange men for admiration, money or votes.

As Kate Sheppard pointed out in this piece, McCain’s record on women’s issues is appalling. But Megan’s post really gets at the heart of the matter. McCain has such a bad record on women’s issues because he has a problem with women — that is, he views them as something less than human. Good for fucking, or for childrearing, maybe, or for providing the money to bankroll his career in politics. But not people, exactly.