John McCain's Bimbo Explosion

By now almost anyone with a blog and an interest in politics has likely read the New York Times story of John McCain and the not so disinterested lobbyist, Ms. Vicki Iseman. By tomorrow, everyone else in the world will have also. I won't go into the gory details. Suffice it to say that there was a period during the 2000 presidential election campaign that McCain campaign officials suspected the straight talking Senator from Arizona was having an affair with Iseman:

...By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.

A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices.

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman.

The Right is, quite predictably, throwing a fit over the story in ways that echo their principled anger at similar spurious allegations that were leveled against Democratic candidate John Edwards a few months ago... oh wait... they didn't complain then? Nevermind.

I will say that I'm most amused by one overly defensive Fox News story, particularly this line:

The Times article... also discusses how campaign aides kept the two apart during the 2000 election for fear they were giving the impression they were having an affair.

Heh... Roger Ailes' boys are too scared of this story to even accurately reprint its allegations. Concern that McCain and Iseman were having an affair is recast in the Fox version as concern that they were giving the impression they were having an affair.

At least Fox was honest enough to report that McCain has hired attorney Bill Bennet to help him wade through this bimbo explosion. Who's Bill Bennet, you ask? Why he's the guy who represented Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Apparently McCain is as tone deaf to the implications of his carousing as he is to the symbolism inherent in the particular lawyers he hires to help him ride out the storm it caused.