-
sponsorship
Meghan McCain, I was so wrong about you. Just a little more than a year ago, during her father’s failed campaign for president, I wrote a piece for Slate about how McCain had learned to cannily manipulate her very blond public image to its full advantage while still maintaining a modicum of privacy. I even called her shrewd. That was before she joined Twitter ... (Read more in DoubleX.)
-
sponsorship
Meghan McCain was on The Colbert Report last night and despite some giggles and a hideous, huge, Bedazzled ring,
she acquitted herself admirably. When is someone going to give this
self-identified "24-year-old, pro-sex woman" and Republican her own
television show? Young and Republican In America, hosted by Meghan McCain, running on one of the cable news networks twice a week? I'd watch.
Colbert tries his best to throw his guests off their talking points, but McCain could recite hers in a coma. She was not to be derailed. While defending her core position... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
-
sponsorship
This week's column from Meghan McCain is my favorite thus far. While her previous installments were solidly naive, this week's manages to be that and hilarious. As it turns out, the senator's daughter is on Twitter, and guess who's following her Twitter feed? Karl Rove. And that gives Meghan the creeps!
"Karl Rove follows me on Twitter," McCain reveals. "That's creepy." Surely, Rove on Twitter is a creepy concept. Does he really have so little to do with his time these days that he feels compelled to send messages like these out into the void? "Joining Bill O'Reilly tonight," he tweets. Not exactly breaking news. But there's more. "Got to the airport with a lot of time to spare." Who says Rove's post-Bush career is not without thrills? My favorite is the one where he discloses he's getting his shoes shined. Fascinating.
So, what's the probs with Karl's tweets, Megs? Apparently, she finds them "disingenuous." Possibly even written by a ghost-twitterer, she ruminates! (I doubt it. Nobody could come across as dull and unself-aware as Rove-on-Rove.) Therefore, she concludes, it's time for folks like herself to "take Twitter back from the creepy people." Employing her usual writing style, in which she expresses some random thought and never really unpacks that random thought, it remains unclear exactly why she finds Rove following her "creepy." In all likelihood, it's another one of her attempts to set conservatives like herself, who find themselves attempting to blindly steer forward a floundering party, apart from the icky old guys like Rove. The problem is that she and Rove have more in common than she comprehends. After all, she's just a Karl Rove creep in sorority girl clothing.
-
sponsorship
Looks like Meghan McCain's wit and wisdom will soon be available in your local bookstore: the 24-year-old has scored a book deal based on her Daily Beast columns, for a reported six-figure sum. (Close Meghan-watchers know this will actually be her second tome). She's keeping mum on what it's about, but it probably won't stray too far from the major theme of her columns thus far: becoming young and hot and tech savvy is how the Republican party can fix itself. (For Meghan's sake, I hope the book gets a more surgical edit than the Daily Beast has offered her work). Here's my question, though: What's she going to write about when she's no longer young and hot and tech savvy? A handful of columns in, her schtick already has some crows feet. Will we be sick of hearing it by the time her book makes it through production?
-
sponsorship
Meghan McCain. Bless her heart. From the side ponytail to the fake catfight, she had us all fooled. We thought she was a dingbat. In reality, she's clever like a fox. Writing a column for the Daily Beast? Everyone scratched their heads. She's so ... vapid. So ... devoid of ideas. Was there something we were missing? After her weak attempt to draw Ann Coulter into a "debate" that even Coulter wouldn't stoop to partake in, McCain has finally made her writerly mission clear. She's looking to get laid!
This week's installment reads like a masturbatory reverie in homage to (gasp!) our youngest (swoon!) congressman, Aaron Schock (insert "shocker" joke). Mr. Illinois is Mini-McCain's "GOP's House Hottie"! ZOMG, Megs, I am, like, so with you on this one! Frankly, the Schockster had me at that photo of him greased up by the pool, browner than fried pig fat, basking in the shade of a faceless young woman's hot pink ta-tas, but Meghan closed the deal with her 1,500-word essay on how he's, like, totally smart, and also supergreat, which is, like, superawesome for the GOP!!! Yay! Schock in 2012. Or whatever.
According to McCain, who only figured out who Schock is because those half-naked shots of him appeared on TMZ, Schock is, well, interesting. As she puts it: "Schock’s rapid rise to the national level is, if nothing else, interesting, especially given the serious soul-searching the Republican Party is experiencing." So, he's interesting because he's ... interesting? I am intrigued.
Apparently, McCain likes Schock because: a) he's young, and her dad was old and that was bad, so Schock being young is good, b) he's not a radical, just like Meghan!, which is good, because the Republican Party needs all the help it can get at this point, c) he totally understands the power of the Internet (see: half-naked photos), which can be bad, but which can also be good, or, as Schock opines of the American people with an eloquence that suggests McCain may have found her intellectual match: "They watch pop culture, but they are also voters." Obvs.
Clearly, I hadn't given Meghan McCain enough credit. It never occurred to me to use my platform here on The XX Factor to get laid by some guy in Congress. I'll have to work on that.
-
sponsorship
Hah, Jessica, thank you for posting that Meghan-McCain-as-goth-Betty-Boop TV clip. The thing I find the weirdest about McCain is that even as she flaunts her next-gen cred (telling Larry King she likes it when Republicans in their 40s and 50s bash her and encouraging the GOP to get with the 21st-century program), she's fashioning a personal image for herself that's oddly retro: the cute, bubbly, vintage-fashion-dudded (she's got a bit of a Felicity Shagwell look going) girl who can barely add and is all-over sweetly clueless about book-smart things. It's kind of political pundit meets I Dream of Jeannie.
Am I too harsh? It's funny how this whole persona was a lot more charming when it represented McCain's rebellion from being just another rigid, scripted, all-too-professional-and-poised candidate's child, like in this from-the-trail blog post I still remember from last summer:
On our way home we met a police officer whose last name was “McNutt.” It reminded me of "McLovin" in the movie, “Superbad.” It still makes me laugh!
-
sponsorship
Looks like Meghan McCain is here to stay as a Republican pundit: She has a column out today in the Daily Beast, interviewing Bobby Jindal's wife, Supriya, and she was on Larry King last night talking about her party. It also looks like she's not doing anything to dispel those accusations of ditziness, as Meghan's interview of Supriya was one softball after another. First, Meghan discovers that Supriya excels at Sudoku Samurai and says in response, "Oh my gosh those are so hard! I can barely add! You do those for fun?" Then, Meghan proceeds to ask Supriya a series of questions about her early dates with Bobby, and in the intro she describes Supriya as a positive role model within the Republican Party. Couldn't Meghan have found a single positive Republican role model who was actually elected to office?
Anyway, here's a clip of McCain on Larry King last night, talking about the Republican Party's lack of leadership and her support for gay marriage while wearing a giant hair bow.
-
sponsorship
A guest post from Slate intern Margaret Johnson:
I was perusing the Simon & Schuster children’s book catalog to see what the kids are reading these days, and I came across a picture book written by none other than Meghan McCain, whose recent cat-fighting Dahlia rightfully skewered in her great piece in Slate today. That’s right, folks, your favorite daddy’s-girl blogopundit and mine is an author, too. My Dad, John McCain, came out last September, midcampaign, and features lots of lovely, nostalgia-inducing illustrations of father and daughter by the guy who drew Felicity and Samantha for the American Girl books. And to think, all Cate Edwards wrote about her dad’s campaign was her Princeton thesis.
Here’s the blurb from the catalog:
Born with a commitment to serve his country, Senator John McCain was destined to run for president one day. In this picture book, written by his daughter Meghan, young readers will learn all of the fascinating and sometimes dangerous events that helped shape the senator and prepared him for the race for the White House. From perilous wartime service to a twenty-year plus career in the Senate, this book will give readers an inside look at a man who has devoted his life to his country. The publisher shall donate one percent of its net proceeds from the sale of this book through regular U.S. trade channels to Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. (Net proceeds are the gross amounts received by the publisher less shipping, mailing, and insurance costs or charges and taxes.) Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund is an organization that aids military personnel and veterans who have suffered severe traumatic brain injuries while serving our nation.
Has the Candidate’s Daughter become a stock character in our political narratives, and if so, what’s that about? And does anyone think 1 percent is a pretty pathetic donation to brain-damaged veterans, especially for a book by a woman who brags in its pages that her “ancestors have fought for their country in every American war since the Revolution”?
-
sponsorship
Some of the other "XX Factor" women and I took that interactive quiz Abby mentioned from the Center for American Progress in order to find out how progressive we are. Turns out, we are quite the bunch of liberals. (I know: shocker). Twelve of us took the quiz, and on a scale of 0 to 400 (0 is the least progressive; 400 is the most progressive), we came out with an average score of 245. To put that in context, the mean score for liberal Democrats is 247 and 160.6 for conservative Republicans. Our median is somewhere in the mid-290s; our high is 313, and our low is 112.
Abby, I don't know what Meghan McCain's score on the progressiveness scale would be, but here's an interesting tidbit on Ms. McCain from Think Progress. Apparently this morning on Fox and Friends, Meghan said that she thought the earmarks in the spending bill were "disappointing and scary" while she found the prospect of a second stimulus package nonsensical. This is in direct contrast to what Meghan said last night on The Rachel Maddow Show (bold from Think Progress):
McCAIN: Spending freeze? You know, econ—economic things, I said this last night on Hannity, I said is my—I didn’t even take econ in college. I don’t completely understand it so I’d hate to make a comment one way or the other. That’s—truly of all the things—I keep reading and I just don’t understand it.
She seems to understand it just fine when she's criticizing Democrats!
-
sponsorship
I have to agree with you, Susannah. Could someone please get this girl off Twitter long enough to read the news? Even if you're only 24 and just want everyone to get along, is it too much to ask that you deliver a one-liner about your opinion on the economy? Which would lead me to assume that the whole buying an apartment in NYC thing that Maddow asked her about is really Daddy buying her an apartment in NYC. (How many houses are we up to now, Sen. McCain?)
I think Meghan is right that the Republican Party needs some charismatic leadership in order to reach out to more young people—or just more people in general. But she's case in point that there's no sense in reaching out if you can't even articulate what you believe and why.
And speaking of figuring out what you believe, I'd love to know Meghan's score on this interactive quiz from the Center for American Progress. I love it—it's like this number could be the new political secret handshake, essentially your political SAT score! Would love to hear how you XX ladies score—it takes about two minutes and will give you a number to quantify your political slant. Let's just say I bring the average down ...
-
sponsorship
Thanks, Jessica, for the YouTube clip of Meghan McCain on Maddow's show last night. Now can I have my IQ points back? From start to finish, it's a profile in Republican idiocy, from mini McCain offering herself up as some type of towheaded neo-poster girl for the right to her faltering faux-platform that consists solely of her picking a fight with Ann Coulter. That's like picking a fight with Hitler. I mean: What? Are we supposed to be impressed she doesn't like the She-Devil? McCain takes Republicans to task for being too extreme and offers her idea of an alternative: "Be more moderate and reach out to people." That's. So. Deep. What's delightful is to see her paired with such a brilliant interviewer. Every word that comes out of Maddow's mouth only serves to make the New Poster Child of the Republican Party appear even stupider. What's a tougher call is that McCain and her commentaries are so insipid, her presence begs for the question: Who's worse? Meghan McCain or Ann Coulter? Tough call, in my opinion. At least Coulter has a brain. What she does with it is the problem.
-
sponsorship
Speaking of Facebook, or at least the Facebook generation, Meghan McCain was on The Rachel Maddow Show last night, ostensibly to discuss her burgeoning feud with Ann Coulter. For those of you who missed it, Meghan McCain wrote an article for the Daily Beast called "My Beef With Ann Coulter." Her "beef" is that Ann Coulter "perpetuates negative stereotypes" of Republicans. Not exactly a revolutionary screed, as others have pointed out.
Meghan is trying valiantly to revive the image of the Republican Party, but like Bristol Palin before her, Meghan doesn't exactly have the political chops to do so. She freely admits that she doesn't really understand the financial crisis. What I don't understand is why the Republican Party can't find a smart young woman to represent their movement who does understand the recession. Perhaps someone without a political legacy! Anyway, John Cook at Gawker says that Meghan "made a fool of herself." While I think she was short on substance, I don't think Meghan looks like a fool. She's incredibly poised and camera-ready, and compared to Bristol she sounds like a rocket scientist. But, again: The bar is pretty low. Watch the clip below and tell me what you think.
-
sponsorship
Noreen, I share your obsession with all things Meghan McCain. And while I agree with you that being a Carrie Bradshaw also-ran perhaps is not the best career move for young Meg, I wonder what else she could be doing at this point that's more fulfilling. Since she interned at Newsweek, she is probably interested in a career in journalism, and as we all know, even entry level jobs in magazines are in short supply. Sadly, overshares on the Daily Beast may be her best bet. I found her first-person dating piece more compelling than most of the Bradshavian drivel that gets published. At least she has had a life experience (being the daughter of a failed presidential candidate) that's unique, unlike certain other young female Daily Beast contributors.
-
sponsorship
The media adventures of Meghan McCain have become a bit of a hobbyhorse for me, so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when four e-mails showed up in my inbox with a link to this Daily Beast article she wrote about the difficulties of dating in the wake of her father's failed presidential campaign. McCain's first article for the Tina Brown startup, a semi-reported piece on how poorly the GOP has adopted to technology, was a strong start and a subject upon which she has a certain purchase. Her second effort, an "exclusive" sit-down interview with, um, her mommy, had the whiff of seventh-grade civics project writ embarrassingly large, but I guess journalists might as well use the access they get, right? (Maybe she just interpreted the old chestnut "If your mother tells you she loves, you, check it out" as a story assignment.) But now she's turned to writing this "Looking for Mr. Far Right" column, wherein she moans that "One extreme fan of my mother's recently told me I could be ‘his Cindy.' And then asked me if I ever wore pearls because they probably would look as good on me as they do on my mother. No, I'm not kidding. Any guy that has a fetish for older women in pantsuits and large pearls obviously only finds my last name attractive about me."
Oh, Meghan. I feel for her, I really do. That's weird and terribly awkward, as I imagine much of her life must be. But still, writing about how your political dad kills your love life probably isn't the best way to distance yourself from that particular issue or establish an independent identity. It sure is a great way to get page views and stay in the spotlight, though.
-
sponsorship
It's fairly remarkable that Cindy McCain does not see the irony in complaining about the New York Times' biased reporting during an interview given by her own daughter. The Daily Beast posted this interview of Cindy by Meghan McCain, in which the former tries once again to present herself as a salt-of-the-earth Jane Winebox. She claims not to care about clothes beyond being "comfortable and easy to pack" and shares her gross hotel experiences, like "that one in Iowa that had the bathtub in the middle of the room was pretty bad." This multimillionaires-are-just-like-us posturing is all well and good, but I don't understand why Cindy feels she still needs to do this. From the excellent Ariel Levy New Yorker profile of McCain that came out in September, it seemed that Cindy did not at all relish her time in the public eye, and this sort of thing will only prolong her exposure. Maybe she's just doing it to promote her new nonprofit organizations, but the timing of the article is odd if that was Cindy's intent. Why did she choose this inaugural moment to exonerate herself?
-
sponsorship
Awhile back I wrote that Meghan McCain had learned to negotiate the difficult terrain of being a political daughter by oversharing on surface-level stuff, and keeping quiet on the truly personal. Looks like she hasn't quite stuck to that-on Hannity and Colmes, she revealed a bit more about the grudges she holds as a political daughter. She's mad about the Atlantic cover controversy, saying"I have a problem when it gets dirty and you're doctoring photos." Most striking is what she said about her support for Kerry and Gore, framing it as more of a vote against Bush, who ran a nasty smear campaign against her dad in the South Carolina primaries, than for the Democrats:
MCCAIN: I can be behind my father all day every day.
COLMES: Sure.
MCCAIN: . until the end of time. I just couldn't get behind President Bush. I just couldn't. It's personal.
COLMES: Yes. You couldn't get behind President Bush?
MCCAIN: It's personal. I was 19 at the time.
HANNITY: And it's a primary 2000.
(CROSSTALK)
COLMES: Hold on, let's.
MCCAIN: It had to do with my little sister, and like, you know, you were just saying that the wounds of a political child run really deep. And there are things that I don't know if I'll ever completely get over.
COLMES: Was it because of what happened in 2000 during the campaign?
MCCAIN: Yes.
COLMES: That you two -- what about your dad now? Is he -- looks like he may have.
MCCAIN: No. He's a great forgiver, move on-er. No. Yes.
Her decision to stump for her dad was obviously one made out of love and personal, rather than party, loyalty. And now she's got to stand there and justify her dad's politically expedient apostasy by saying he's a "mover on-er," and she's got to somehow justify to herself that even though she's been deeply hurt by negative campaigning, it's ok that the McCain campaign isn't exactly taking the high road these days. When I wrote about her earlier, I was impressed with the amount of agency I saw her taking-exploiting the publicity system lest it exploit you first isn't exactly a feminist battle cry, but at least it's not passive. Now, all I can think when I read this is "Poor Meghan, she's trapped." But am I getting played like a flute? Now's probably not a bad time to be reminding people that the McCains have been on the receiving end of smears, and Meghan, at her own admission, didn't go in to this thing a political naïf. This wasn't her first interview, and it wasn't the first time she's talked about the way the 2000 election affected her. Should I put back on my armor of cynicism?
-
sponsorship
Noreen wrote a great piece about the shrewd public persona of Megan McCain. I agree that Meghan's response to her comment on the Today show was quick and effective. What I found more interesting, though, is something she said that same day on The View.
When co-host Sherri Shepherd asked if she ever regrets anything she says, Meghan said no:
"I don't believe in regrets."
However, after the media began discussing the Today show comment, Meghan responded on her blog:
"I regret my comments as they were delivered."
I'm not saying she wasn't entitled to regret or that she shouldn't have posted the clarification. In fact, I think it was critical that she responded because it was obvious she didn't understand the full meaning of the comment when she made it. Although she swears she never wants to run for office, she's clearly feeling the heat from the political spotlight. Maybe she's learning the hard way that talking candidly isn't always the way to go.
-
sponsorship
Wow, Rachael. Kudos to you for highlighting the McCain Blogette. That is quite a campaign artifact. Like mother, like daughter, eh? That little anime silhouette in the corner wearing nothing but BRIGHT RED heels and a tank top, a certain part of the anatomy lit up by the glow of the laptop. A BBF named La-Toria, a la Paris and Nicole. Dozens of viewer letters from girl-fans saying some version of Wow! This is an awesome Web site! or You definitely bring a brighter side to your father's campaign!!! Dozens of links from boy fans saying some version of "Is she smoking hot?" (referring to Meghan of course) And the other sister, the adopted one with the braces and the scared look onstage, conspicuously absent.
I remember when Karenna Gore did campaign dispatches for Slate, and they were, as one McCain Blogette fan says, "refreshingly authentic." They were funny and ironic and just short of telling tales out of school. This Meghan McCain blog is something entirely different. It's like a poll-tested perfect shout-out to the MySpace generation. A little Ramones, a little Wonkette, a little Hannah Montana, some candid family pics and short, grainy clips from a cell-phone video.
Poor Chelsea. Earnest 4eva :(
-
sponsorship
Coming in late to the "pimped out" conversation, I know, but I had a revelation while checking out Meghan McCain's blog. I wonder if the perception that Chelsea is being used by Hillary's campaign (like Dahlia, I need my job, so I'm not using the p-word) comes from what kind of work Chelsea is doing for the campaign, not the mere fact that she's out there at all. (And I want to say before I go on that I totally agree with Hanna's point that of course kids campaign for their parents.)
Chelsea is making phone calls and giving speeches (kinda boring ones, if I read Melinda correctly). Meanwhile, John McCain's daughter is telling us that "Riding on the plane for 5 hours to San Diego felt like: Rufus Wainwright's ‘Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk (Reprise),' " and "Having such a rockin' Super Tuesday felt like: Michael Jackson's ‘Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough.' " She intersperses photos of rallies and campagin stops with goofy pictures from her travels and talks about her love of fashion and going to In-and-Out burger. The clear message is that she's an otherwise normal twentysomething who loves her dad and thinks he will be a great president—there's so much visible warmth and enthusiasm. She's reaching out to young voters without making it seem like work.
I'm not so far removed from my 20s that I've forgotten that there's a difference between being 23, like Meghan, and 28, like Chelsea. But just because Chelsea is a successful, mature young woman shouldn't mean that she should have to stand up in a business suit and pumps and tell us how fiscally conservative her mom is. A recent piece from the Boston Globe—which is accompanied by a photo of Chelsea with Hillary that does convey great warmth—says that Chelsea is becoming more comfortable on the trail. If so, that's great for Chelsea. Maybe if she gets to find her own voice, people won't be so skeptical about it.