Monday, July 14, 2008

McCain The Neo-Feminist?

John McCain has seen the light! He has become a spokesman for the women of this country, a feminist even. Granted, he still needs to find his sea legs on the issues specific to women, as this video demonstrates:






Mmm. Perhaps a little lost there? (Watch that again with the sound off. It's wonderful.)

Still, McCain's conversion is astonishing in its rapidity. It was only this April, after all, when he couldn't find the time to vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have extended the time for women to pursue pay-discrimination suits, though he did have enough time to tell us that he would have voted against the bill.

What a difference a few months can make. Here are McCain's new views on women and pay discrimination:
We haven't done enough. We have not done enough. And I'm committed to making sure that there's equal pay for equal work. That there is equal opportunity in every aspect of our society. And that is my record and you can count on it.

Don't you just love that last sentence? Too bad that McCain's voting record doesn't support his new-found feminist principles, and too bad that it is that record which we should probably count on.


McCain's astonishing feminist conversion is nothing of the kind, of course, but both the usual move towards the middle, something which is expected at this stage of the election campaigns, and also an attempt to fish for the votes of Democratic women who supported Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. What is astonishing about all this is how clumsy McCain's attempts are, how little research and thought he appears to have put into the necessary play-acting and what all this tells about his views on women voters.