Take My Wife - Please!

John McCain has a sense of humor which can be charitably called odd. Whether it's singing a let's-bomb-Iran ditty to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann," joking about killing Iranians with American cigarette exports, or his jest about a woman being raped by a gorilla, his attempts at humor tend to backfire messily.

And now we have another example.

McCain was in Sturgis, South Dakota yesterday, campaigning at the annual Buffalo Chip biker rally. Now, it is admittedly odd for a 71-year-old man to proclaim kinship with a bunch of big Harley riders, but stranger things have happened. In the midst of the flesh-pressing and speech-making, he made a rather interesting comment about his wife Cindy, who was standing right next to him: "I encouraged Cindy to compete. I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip."

A little explanation is needed here. Every year, one of the high (?) points at the Sturgis rally is an event which ESPN described far better than I can:

Buffalo Chip has a reputation for that sort of thing. It holds a Miss Buffalo Chip contest every night, which is essentially a topless beauty pageant. And occasionally bottomless, too. During a drenching rain Wednesday night, the contest broke up into smaller groups and one woman wound up dancing naked on a bar top. Her boyfriend/husband saw her and angrily dragged her away as she struggled to put her pants back on and muttered something about how, "It's only this one week a year."

So was McCain really volunteering to put his wife on display? I would call it just another of his off-the-cuff attempts at cracking a joke, except the video clearly shows him reading from a prepared text.

If Barack Obama had offered Michelle up like this, the media would roast him for weeks on end - assuming, that is, he survives whatever Michelle would put him through. She's no dummy, and she sure looks tough as nails.

So McCain may have won the biker vote by showing up at Buffalo Chip, but he might have lost the women's vote with his rather crass comment. And there are a lot more women than bikers.