“And now on to the Polacks…”

You may recall that the McCain campaign recently had to sheepishly disassociate itself from a fund raiser held by former Texas GOP nominee Clayton Williams when it was revealed in 1990 the latter had told the awful rape joke made most infamous in that same time period by Bobby Knight ("if inevitable lie back and enjoy it").

However, now it has been re-discovered that not long before, during his first Senate run in 1986 the Ol’ Maverick made a joke on the same subject that achieves the dubious distinction of being even more offensive:

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, “Where is that marvelous ape?”

Yeah, classy.

Naturally, McCain, well-his campaign, denied that ever saying such a thing the offensive gag.

"It’s pretty obvious to us that this is a politically motivated sideshow," Torrie Clarke, McCain’s spokeswoman at the time, said back in 1986. Till this day it has never been proven definitively true or false whether the Senator ever said the line.

Nice to see that Torrie Clarke cut her spurs lying for McCain before lying for Bush and Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. Good training.

Sam Stein at the Huffington Post did something that modern journalist covering McCain don’t often do, practiced journalism:

The Huffington Post reached out to the original reporter in that story, Norma Coile (who wrote about the response to the rape joke in the Tuscon Citizen) to find out if she thought it was true.

"I’m not sure exactly what the wording was of the joke, but something was said. Some joke involving a rape and ape was said. Enough women repeated it to me at the time and the McCain campaign had a non-denial denial," said Coile, now with the Arizona Daily Star. "It came after his ‘Seizure World’ joke, in which he referred to the [retirement community] Leisure World as Seizure World… I just think it reinforced this idea that John McCain is humor-challenged. Whatever his qualities, he seems to have a tin ear for how these jokes will go over."

Ah yes, the "Seizure World" joke. And as Stein points out, there was also the Chelsea Clinton joke in 1998, he odiously declared before a GOP crowd: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."

And then there was the most joke about how sending cigarettes to Iran was a good way to kill them.

Given his track record, there seems no reason to doubt McCain made this incredibly awful joke about rape. Of course, the likelihood of this being looked into beyond we Dirty Effing Hippies? Low.

Yes, disenchanted Clinton voters this is the guy you want to vote for. The guy against abortion rights, against non-Ozzie & Harriet Adoptions, against equal pay but totally for more of those awesome wars and really awful slanderous jokes.

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