10 Reasons Meghan McCain’s Dirty Sexy Politics Should Have Been Called Ironic Clueless Narcissist

Originally posted at David Horowitz’s NewsReal

by Jenn Q. Public & Lori Ziganto

The long awaited train wreck known as Meghan McCain’s Dirty Sexy Politics was released August 31, 2010. She totally wrote it. By. Herself. And we read it – the entire 194, long, painful pages. We are givers like that, even though we are now slack-jawed and drooling givers, but still. If you’ve read Meggie Mac’s Daily Beast articles, you can pretty much guess at the level of insight offered by the book. In fact, our 11 Chapters Axed post was eerily prescient, sadly.

In any event, the book at times caused a slight glimmer of sympathy. Until, you know, the next sentence wherein Meggie Mac would once again make everything all about Her. And her edginess – which is about as edgy as a spoon.

Enjoy – it is a tale told by a useful idiot. Full of sound and fury. And signifying nothing.

1. Irony Inundates the Introduction

Oh, dear. From the very start of Meghan McCain’s Dirty Sexy Politics, the pages were rife with unintentional irony. The introduction itself set the tone. Worse, she even brings up being ironic herself in the introduction, after she explains that she has a score to settle with the Republican party, which she thinks has “lost its way.” You know, because they aren’t all super cool progressives and such. Sadly, she fails to see the true irony in her own statements:

I realize that it’s ironic that this book tells the story of my own struggle to get my act together. But, it is one of the bizarre realities of life that you can be a mess yourself but still see so clearly what is wrong with others.

I’m leaving the first sentence alone. I think the hilarity of the implication that any act was gotten together speaks for itself. As for the second sentence – oh, Meggie.:  I realize that you are surrounded by mostly users or yes-men. However, someone must tell you the harsh truth.:  Someone who is a total wreck and, yet, still chooses to believe that she is qualified – with no actual qualifications -:  to pass judgment on others? That’s called a sanctimonious, delusional hypocrite. Kind of like how you went on to say about the Republican party that if you don’t “hold the accepted attitudes, then you don’t fit in.”

Um. Does H8r!!11 ring a bell? You want a “big tent” – for everyone who only agrees with you. Disagree? Get out, H8r!

Somehow being a Republican isn’t a political decision anymore. It is a lifestyle choice. You have to look one way, think one way, and act one way

I thought “progressive Republicans”were all about the lifestyle choice! Or, is that another instance when only one kind of choice counts? Secondly, I don’t know what kind of Republicans you know, but I know very few who look one way, think one way or act one way. We are individuals, you see. Not sheep trying to fit in with the allegedly cool kids.

2. Shut Up About My Weight So I Can Tell You About This Chubby Reporter

During her father’s presidential campaign, Meghan’s appearance was under constant scrutiny.:  Reporters, pundits, and the voting public all had something to say about whether she was too blonde, too fat, too slutty, or too tacky. She writes:

Early on, I was described in several articles as “voluptuous,” which troubled me. Why describe my body at all? But my physical appearance was mentioned time and time again on the blogosphere.

This is one of those sections of Dirty Sexy Politics that almost elicits a tiny bit of sympathy.:  Almost, but not quite.:  That’s because Meghan lives by the “do as I say, not as I do” rulebook.

She reveals her hypocrisy in the early pages of her memoir when she describes a YouTube clip of a confrontation between Mitt Romney and an overweight reporter:

[The video] showed a heated squabble between the governor and a chubby, semi-dorky AP reporter named Glenn Johnson at a press conference inside a Staples office supply store….

Romney’s campaign manager eventually loses it, and pulls the reporter aside. ‘Don’t be argumentative with the candidate!’ It’s truly priceless, and I loved how Romney, who always came off as slick and unreal, had been undone by such a visual mess of a guy. I’d seen the clip at least fifty times and laughed every time. (Much later, I ran into Glenn Johnson on the street in New York and told him how much I loved his YouTube clip. For the record, he’d lost an extreme amount of weight by then and looked great.

Yes, Meghan actually starts her book with an anecdote about a pudgy guy who looks fabulous now that he’s slimmed down to a Meggie Mac-approved body size. And just chapters later, she’s “troubled” by the mere mention of her body by reporters and bloggers.:  This is the same woman who once wrote a Daily Beast column asking, “Why is [body weight] still a socially accepted prejudice?”

Looks like Meghan owes Glenn Johnson a big ol’ apology for being a big ol’ hypocrite.:  To paraphrase her book, why describe his body at all?

3. It’s a Hard Knock Life, for Me, Me, ME!!!

Life was rough on the campaign trail.:  The food was often junky, Meggie and her blog staff (yes, she had a staff) had to ride in a stinky bus, and her dad’s campaign staff thought she “was like a curse, a brat, a diva, a monstrous daughter-of.”:  What’s worse, Meggie was:  sometimes forced to endure the unthinkable: accommodations in a hotel without elevators!

The worst hotel that I remember was in Iowa as well — a hotel so bleak, and so do-it-yourself, that my dad had to help us haul our big suitcases up two flights of stairs to our room. Out in the hallway, there was an ancient vending machine with cans of coke that looked twenty years old. Our room was so terrible, there wasn’t even a closet, just a bar on the wall where you could hang your clothes, but the hangers were soldered onto that bar, so nobody could steal them. The lightbulb in the bathroom was just that — a bare lightbulb and a chain. Who says politics is glamorous?

A walk-up hotel room and no bellhop?!:  Her family had to help her with her luggage? The horror!:  Next she’ll tell us that her diamond tiara pinches and Sarah Palin’s adorable 7-year-old daughter Piper got way more attention than she did.:  Oh, wait …

4. I Totally Wasn’t Fired By My Dad’s Campaign! I Was Just Told Not To Come Back.

Sadly, Meghan McCain is doing a book tour wherein she reinforces some of the most pitifully clueless sections of her book. One such instance is when she was booted from her dad’s campaign. She insists that words do not mean what we all think that they mean. Being asked not to come back? Totally not fired, as she reiterated to George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning, America”:

McCain insists she was not fired from her father’s campaign but rather “was asked to leave and not come back or go on my own bus tour.” She chose the latter and called it a “blessing in disguise” because she had the opportunity to campaign on her own.

Dear Meghan: Being asked to not come back means “don’t let the door hit you in the ass” – juicy or not. And the choice of a bus tour of your own means not with the campaign.

She, of course, chose to go out on “tour” on her own. The reasons?

I could lead as many tours of the bus as:  I wanted, play any music I liked, sing as loudly as possible, and express myself as colorfully as I could – even if every word would have been inappropriate for Piper

She whines about the Palins incessantly and Pesky Piper in particular was totally cramping her style.:  Or, you know, was getting too much attention. Piper, Piper, Piper!

5. Yay Tolerance! Yay Differences! (Aren’t Mormons Weird and Hilarious?)

In that seething cesspool of bigotry known as the GOP, “progressive Republican” Meghan McCain fancies herself an enlightened beacon of hopenchange. Translation: unlike those closed-minded wingnuts, she’s all about tolerance.:  “Under that big, wide-open sky of Arizona, where I grew up, there seemed to be room for everybody,” she recalls.

But now, Meggie believes Republicans have veered too far to the right, losing sight of Barry Goldwater’s vision:

It was about removing fences, not building them. It was about tolerance. It was about appreciating differences and new ideas.

And no one appreciates differences and new ideas more than Meghan.:  Unless your differences come from being one of those eminently mockable Mormons:

My roommates and I had lots of jokes about the Romneys, who seemed doomed to join the campaign any second. They were all so handsome in a tooth-whitener commercial kind of way, and so seriously wholesome.:  We wondered whether the Five Brothers, the nickname for the Romney sons, could handle the constant drinking and swearing that went on in our campaign — the press corps included. Not to mention all the tawdry stories about crazy-sex that you never read about.

Nothing like a good stereotype or two to establish yourself as a model of tolerance and inclusiveness.

But no worries. Just like other “progressives,” Meghan believes she’s exempt from practicing what she preaches from her holier-than-thou soapbox.: You see, unlike those mouth-breathing conservatives, she knows better. Her “celebrate diversity” credentials are already in order, so she’s entitled to do and say as she pleases. Little does she know that her personal cloud of self-righteous smug doesn’t actually prevent us from seeing her hypocrisy.

Just in case, Meghan has a defense ready: she’s only intolerant of Mitt Romney and his family because they’re (probably) the intolerant ones.

{L]ike all humor, my jokes about Romney shielded something very real.:  It wasn’t so much that I disapproved of the Romneys. I worried they’d disapprove of me — my bleached hair, my swearing, my ‘edgy’ clothes, not to mention my gay friends. Would they accept me or scorn me as some kind of closet liberal who didn’t fit in?

The Romneys who live in Meghan’s head hate her hair, her clothes, and of course, The Gays.:  The Romneys who live beyond the boundaries of Meggie’s edgy-as-a-cotton-ball hair?:  They don’t really matter to Me-Me-Meggie.

Isn’t it a stroke of luck that we have Meghan McCain, the very epitome of open-mindedness, to lead the GOP into a new era of tolerance?

6. Look How Progressive I Am! I Think Sarah Palin is Icky!

Meghan McCain is not a big fan of Sarah Palin, as her book clearly indicates even if she tries to cover it up with back-handed compliments.:  Her Palin dislike started prior to even knowing that Palin was her father’s choice for running mate. You see, his choice was a secret, for obvious reasons. Well, obvious to anyone but Meghan McCain. She wrote:

… I still had no idea who my father’s running mate was. It was mystifying how unplugged-in I was

Yeah, no. There is no big mystery there, toots. You aren’t the most clever – hence the need to spell it out for you – nor the most discreet person around, that’s why. Also, you were, in a rare glimmer of good sense, not one of your father’s campaign advisors. Meghan’s dislike escalated further once it became clear that Sarah Palin was garnering a huge amount of attention. That doesn’t suit! Plus, Sarah Palin came from Alaska with JC Penney suits. Double crime.

Meghan reveals that she thought Palin was a ” time bomb” and that Palin “brought drama, stress, complications, panic and loads of uncertainty.” Meghan probably has never heard of that whole pot calling kettle black thing, because it’s Racist ™ and she’s super enlightened. But, even worse, she takes her frustrations out on the Palin children.

Word went out that we weren’t supposed to swear in front of the Palins, or at least, all the little Palins. … But, at the same time, I had to wonder why there was a seven-year old girl riding on a campaign bus, whether staff was swearing around her or not

Sigh. She then goes onto say that she was never urged to join Dad on the campaign trail. Meggie was all:  ticked that she couldn’t say the F word (she’s so edgy!) on the bus because Piper Palin was on it. So, she slammed Palin for having her kids travel with the campaign.:  After she begged to come along on the campaign trail herself.:  Plus, Piper was 7 years old at the time and Sarah is her Mama. Is she saying that moms should choose between career and children? Can’t a woman run for office and still mother and nurture her 7-year-old child by bringing her along whenever and wherever possible? I think you can, you know, control your cursing for a couple of hours on a darn bus, oh enlightened one.

The most ironic Palin bash, however, was this bit, in Chapter 13:

I longed for a simpler scene and a simpler running mate; a straight ahead and experienced politician like good, old Joe Lieberman, who always kept it real and didn’t make himself the center of drama or chaos …

… when they arrived from Alaska and unpacked their bags, they brought drama, stress, complications, panic, and loads of uncertainty. And they brought a tabloid-attention-getting quality that my family has never had – and, God willing, never will.

Excuse me whilst we pick ourselves up from the floor, where we’ve collapsed in a fit of hysterics. The center of drama or chaos? Does she not own any mirrors? Oh, my. Bless her tabloid-attention-getting – by choice – heart.

7. People on the Interwebs Are Mean to Me! (Also, Check Out the Mean Stuff I Did to People I Hate)

Meggie Mac’s embarrassing self-absorption and inability to introspect often lead her into the realm of hypocrisy in Dirty Sexy Politics.:  At first, it’s easy to sympathize with the sheltered political daughter when she writes of the pain she felt when her campaign blog, McCainBlogette, was ripped into unidentifiable shreds by the left-wing blogosphere. After all, both of us have been the targets of some pretty vile and vicious attacks by basement dwellers who’ve mastered the art of typing their foul screeds with one hand on the keyboard and the other, well, a bit lower.

Here’s one review of her blog that Meggie found especially distressing:

A Washington, DC-based gossip blog called Wonkette was the first to have a go. The screaming headline said it all: “JOHN MCCAIN’S OTHER DAUGHTER HAS A LAME BLOG!!!”

Here’s the rest:

Hey everybody, John McCain’s daughter “Meghan” has a blog all about, uh, “young professionals” and their alleged main activity, which is going to a John McCain campaign event in Phoenix, called the “Valley Ho.” The blog is only a few days old, but it can already make people cringe like a blog that’s been around for years! Oh and Cindy McCain is on crutches. She probably hurt herself breaking into a pharmacy.

Horrified, I scrolled down to look at the readers’ comments, hoping people would have written in to defend my mom or me. But their remarks were even worse, a dark pit of meanness, mostly about me. Readers had said things like: “She makes the girls from the Bada Bing club look fresh,” referring to the strippers on The Sopranos. Yeah, real nice stuff.

I was a total mess — who wouldn’t be? — and cried for hours.

But just pages later, in the very same chapter, Meggie describes how she used her own blog to hurt and embarrass people.

We put up crappy pictures of people and journalists we didn’t like on the site, knowing how pissed off they’d be.

She brushes off “internal complaints” from “staffers not wanting their picture taken, or just unhappy with things we posted on the blog.”:  Seriously. She bawled for hours at the way McCainBlogette was received by the blogosphere, but used her own site as a platform to needle the people she disliked.

Also, forgive us if we don’t shed too many tears for:  Meggie the Thin-Skinned when big bucks are being shelled out to advertise Dirty Sexy Politics on … wait for it … Wonkette!

Dear Meghan: next time you want some sympathy for the way bloggers treat you, maybe think about not lining the pockets of your detractors with sweet, sweet ad dollars.:  You’re welcome.

8. The Message Shouldn’t Be Pro-Life; It Should Be Crazy-Sex

Sarah Palin is icky and drama-y. Piper Palin totally stomps her edge-y buzz. What about Bristol Palin? Oh, she doesn’t escape the scorned wrath of Meggie Mac either. She uses Bristol to get back to her favorite topic – the topic of her first chapter even – Crazy-Sex! She describes her thought process, term used loosely, when she learned of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy. Of course, she made it all about herself and how an unplanned pregnancy is her worst nightmare. Even more nightmare-ish because she doesn’t think there is any way to ensure that it doesn’t happen – abstinence is for suckers, losers:

Abstinence doesn’t seem practical to me. It seems like a way of avoiding reality and real conversations about complicated things like pregnancy and STDs. Abstinence sends a message that sex is wrong or dirty. It isn’t wrong or dirty to me.

Yes, we know, Meghan. As you’ve told us all relentlessly. Unsolicited. She then babbles on using the words “statistics show” while never:  referring to any actual statistics nor any real facts. Earlier in the book, she faux-empathized with Bristol having to wear over-sized frumpy sweatshirts to disguise her then unknown pregnancy. But, when the pregnancy was announced and Bristol’s “sweatshirt was gone – replaced with a stunning wardrobe”, Miss Perfect found fault with that, too. Now, people were being too kind. They weren’t being remorseful enough. Why, they were discussing, happily, a new life!:  To Meghan, this wasn’t good news:

Did the campaign really want to suggest that a pro-life message was more important than a message of how to avoid teenage pregnancy to begin with?

Gee, Meghan, perhaps not killing a baby is an important message? I know that’s not all super sexy and trendy. But what more can you expect from we drooling rube-ish Conservatives? We are dumb old squares and all, right?

9. Political Proppin’ Ain’t Easy

Before the end of the first chapter of Dirty Sexy Politics, it’s clear that Meghan joined her dad’s campaign at her own insistence, even dipping into her inheritance to pay her way:

When I finished college, I told my parents that I didn’t want to go to graduate school, or open a clothing boutique, as previously discussed.:  I wanted to join the campaign.:  They said that I could come along if I paid my own way.:  The campaign was a sinking ship, or at least financially sunk, when I joined in July 2007. There was no money for extras, and no money for me, or my blog, or the people I’d need to help me produce it….

To bankroll myself and the blog, I used the money that my grandfather had left me, even if, by the end, I had spent every dime.

In fact, it’s painfully clear that her dad’s campaign team saw her as a liability and didn’t want her around at all. Eventually Meghan was “banished to the heartland” on a multi-week bus tour.

And yet, she complains constantly about the accommodations, how she’s treated by campaign staffers (who didn’t want her there in the first place), and her “onstage role as cardboard political prop.”

Being a political prop isn’t easy and it can mess with your mind. There are cameras on you, all the time. The entire traveling press corps stands right in front of you, staring and gawking and judging. You can’t scratch your face or rub your nose. You can’t yawn in boredom, or sit down when your feet start swelling.

Meghan admits she wasn’t asked to be a political prop; she wasn’t even particularly welcome on the campaign trail. And yet, she describes the experience as being like “prison life, where the only things I was in control of, for the most part, were my clothes, my hair, and the blog.”

The campaign tour that no one wanted her to join, that she forced her way onto, was like prison life. Gosh, hopefully she didn’t have to shank anyone with a shiv improvised out of glass shards embedded in a toothbrush handle.:  That would have been embarrassing for the campaign.

10. The Election Was Hard – On ME. Also, Republicans Are Stereotypical Caricatures And I’m a Trail Blazer!

The conclusion of Dirty Sexy Politics epitomizes why Meghan McCain is not taken seriously by anyone other than those who seek to use her as a useful idiot. While the election was certainly personally devastating to her – she loves her father, that much is clear – she can’t even get the figures right, as she’s too focused on herself and her feelings. She says that her father got forty-eight million votes. Yeah, no. He actually received nearly 60 million votes, which even a cursory google search would indicate. For someone so expert in new media and technology, you’d think she’d know how to look at Wikipedia, even, for cripes sake.

That aside, it was the incredibly tired stereotypes and cliches about the Republican party that drove us daft. That, and the idea the Meghan McCain is oh-so-hip and unique. She’s quite the opposite. She is boring and cliched. She thinks of herself as a rebel, but she is a sheep with not one original thought of her own. She believes in antiquated stereotypes of the Republican Party that are not true. In her tunnel-visioned and cocktail party chasing mind Republicans are mindless, bland and beige, robots.

It is time to make room for all Republicans. Today!

Yeah, honey, we already do that. We aren’t the ones who force people out of the party for daring – DARING – to not demonize George W. Bush and to defend our homeland security. Ask your friend Joe Lieberman about that, why don’t you?

We shouldn’t have to look a certain way, or live a certain way. That means my gay friends like Josh, shouldn’t have to pretend they aren’t gay – or have an unequal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell kind of lifestyle in the Republican Party.:  That means that my moderate friends shouldn’t feel like outsiders. And my friends with tattoos and nose rings or women, like me, who like to wear leggings and not pantsuits – they shouldn’t have to think twice about whether their bodies or clothing matched their political philosophy.

Do you actually speak to any Republicans? Or do you just speak to “progressives” who tell you:  what you want to hear about Republicans? Because, sweetie, there are many gay Republicans and they don’t pretend to be otherwise. Why don’t you attend HomoCon?:  Oh wait, you can’t. Because Ann Coulter is speaking at that conference and she’s so intolerant and icky, right? Okay, how about you talk to Gay Patriot? Or GOProud?

And hold onto your Jimmy Choos, but Jenn and I both have tattoos. Funnily enough, no one came and ran us out of the Party over them. And neither of us has ever, even once, worn a pantsuit. I prefer jeans, leggings or cute, short denim skirts. With strappy sandals.:  I also have boobs, gasp!:  Does my body and my clothing match your perceptions of my political philosophy?

Being a republican is not a lifestyle choice. And it doesn’t mean you can’t be young, or gay, or black, or anything else.

The only people saying otherwise, Meghan, are your buddies the so-called progressives. They are the ones who say that gay people, and black people, and women should all walk in lock-step with the Leftist agenda. They are the ones who have created identity boxes.

The last lines of the book are the most hilarious, yet also the most infuriating:

America is the home of the individual, where a woman like me can stop worrying about fitting in – and follow her passion instead.

Don’t let me pick up this torch alone.

Such a trail-blazer! Only, not at all. Listen, toots – women who don’t worry about “fitting in” have already picked up the torch.:  Take off your tunnel-vision goggles, and you might see that.

By Lori Ziganto and Jenn Q. Public

(Originally posted at David Horowitz’s NewsReal Blog)

Follow Jenn on Twitter and read more of her work at JennQPublic.com and The Feminist Hawks’ Nest at NewsReal.

Follow Lori on Twitter and read more of her work at Snark and Boobs, iOwntheWorld , NewsReal, and Red State.

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