Think I’m kidding? What kind of man goes after a 14 year old girl like this just because she’s wearing a t-shirt?
Sen. John McCain, at a town hall event held Wednesday in Michigan, singled out a girl wearing a t-shirt critical of him and challenged her to ask him a question. She asked about the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have corrected the Supreme Court’s destructive ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear: “I was wondering Senator McCain why you had the opportunity to vote to give equal rights to women equal pay [but] you didn’t show up to vote and you said that if you did you wouldn’t support it.”
“This question should be on the minds of millions of working women who may face pay discrimination during their careers,” said Kathryn Kolbert, president of People For the American Way. “Senator McCain had the perfect opportunity to embrace equal pay for equal work, but he instead parroted talking points fed to him by corporate lobbyists. It’s pretty clear from his response that he’s more concerned about the rights of big corporations than those of everyday Americans.”[..]
On Tuesday, Sen. McCain came out in full support of President Bush’s right-wing Supreme Court nominees, the very justices who found in Ledbetter that employees must file a complaint within 180 days of first falling victim to pay discrimination in order to be compensated. “But that’s unrealistic and unreasonable,” said Kolbert. “Employees who receive discriminatory pay typically don’t learn about it until many months or years later, if at all. And a single discriminatory act can have repercussions that last years - throughout a career and into retirement.”
“John McCain says the Fair Pay Act wouldn’t help women,” said Kolbert. “I’d like to see him tell that to Lilly Ledbetter. And I’d like to commend that young woman for standing up to John McCain at such a young age and asking the kind of substantive question that the media so rarely does.”
No Trackbacks To “For John McCain, Hating On Trial Lawyers More Important Than Equality & Fairness“
Some of the best anti-lawyer jokes I’ve heard were told to me by lawyers.
What would a spoiled heiress and her gold-digging husband know about job equality.
mcfuckhead to women of America
go back and put on your burkas.
mcfuckhead the elitist fascist candidate.
equality = i am gop, i am better than you
Leave it to a 14 y/o girl to do what the corporate press refuses to even comtemplate.
listen to the idiots cheer when he mentions trial lawyers. Do these people even know what a trial lawyer is? do the know that McCain uses trial lawyers? do they realize that if they ever had something bad happen to them and it was the fault of another party they would have to get a trial lawyer to handle their case?
That’s republicans for you…so stupid they cheer the reference without knowing the meaning. I guess that’s why they can be fooled by bumper-stickers.
4 woodguy Says: Leave it to a 14 y/o girl to do what the corporate press refuses to even comtemplate.
great observation! it takes a child to show adults they are doing it wrong!
That’s true. I once worked for a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company that would fire people for telling other employees what their pay was. The practice was and is still common, of course, to keep their unfair pay practices hidden.
Saw this on Feministing the other day — and can you believe McCain actually bragged about this incident on The Daily Show???
http://feministing.com/archives/009154.html
I didn’t link because I’m dumb.
It took a lot of guts for the girl to stand up and ask her question, esp. when singled out by McCain. He goaded her.
I wanted to know if the “more articulate” person there was going to ask a question but instead “excused” the young woman because of her age. this was puzzling.
so the fact that trial lawyers benefit outweighs the need for equal pay. hmmm.
Boy, is he ever full of crap!
And his response was? Come on, don’t leave us hanging…..
I wonder what the old buffoon thought about “trial lawyers” threatening to sue networks for running the “100 years” spot, that featured *gasp* McCain saying stuff.
To the Democrats that plan on voting for Mccain because they don’t like the nominee that was picked, this is what you’re going to get. Is this ok with you? The question was asked by a 14 year old who will have to put up with somebody you voted for!
McCain has an empowering message of Republican Ethos: People should work hard and they will be rewarded.
Or they can just cheat on their wife with an heiress worth 100 million.
I’m against McCain, and think he’s dead wrong on this issue for all the reasons in the article, but I do have to give him credit for giving her the opportunity to speak, and for even giving her a chance for a follow up.
Were I the person to whom the brave teen deferred for a follow-up after the InSane sycophants yelped in ecstasy at the thought of sticking it to trial lawyers, I would simply have asked, “Could you explain the mechanism by which you think an equal-pay law would unjustly enrich lawyers? That is, how exactly would the law hurt common people by making lawyers rich?”
I’m sure he has no idea what he’s talking about. I would have loved to debate the Senile Saint in a debate on this topic.
In all honesty, I had little problem with the ruling, since congress can easily fix the problem.
And it forces members of congress to pick a side, between workers or corrupt corporations. We know what side McCain is on, now.
-The Political Jerk
6 Dahgrostabphri Says: 4 woodguy Says: Leave it to a 14 y/o girl to do what the corporate press refuses to even comtemplate.
great observation! it takes a child to show adults they are doing it wrong!
__________________________________________________________________
Lolitas?
His explanation of the incident was a LIE to Jon Stewart. She did not say he discriminated against women, she asked why he didn’t stand up for equal rights for women and skipped the vote, and said it he had bothered to show, he would have voted against it.
I think she handled her business well for a child of her age. The adult who took the mic for the follow-up was a total chickenshit and most likely crushed this little girl with her response. This was obviously someone the girl thought was better informed and more acticulate than herself, and would ask McCain for a better accounting of himself. Instead she shrugged her shoulders and tried to make the child look foolish for daring to ask the question.
What a terrible response. What makes this clip worse are the idiots cheering his idiotic response. It reminds me of how GWB answers tough questions by giving nonsensical answers with the Republican bobbleheads lapping it up. Disgusting
2 Jan Says: What would a spoiled heiress and her gold-digging husband know about job equality.
Yeah, I bet she’s as roomy as a mine shaft.
Grampa Golddigger has some nerve!
I wonder after the speech was done did he call her the “C” word? I think ole Mccranky was bitchslapped by a girl.
As for the rule that every company has about is not telling what your pay is good/bad because it helps the company cheat on pay and pay raises now the corporations use it to screw the employees.
Way to go rethugs
Maybe it’s just me but, perhaps someone could point out to the chimpanzees in the audience that laws such as the Lebetter Fair Pay Act would make it unecessary to use trial lawyers to obtain fairness and equity in the workplace.
McGrampaBullshit is in North Bend WA today, speaking at an Environmental Round table today.
Sweet. He just called Seattle the City of Satan. Funny. We never think of it as Cheney’s town.
GENEhUSSEIN214 @ 24:
So does denying women fair pay in such a manner as to make lawsuits impossible.
Yeah, he really showed that 14yr old. What a man.
You are dealing with social darwinists. Get to know them Nicolle. They believe that the ‘bottom’ is where a ‘loser’ belongs.
He doesnt believe in a world view in which cooperation, collaboration, compromise and civility rule. He believes in winner take all. And he believes that the collective will of the people (government) has no role in protecting the people. He sees that as anti-competative.
People need to come to understand that what he describes as ‘competative’ is predation.
Its worth noting that people that espouse ‘competition’ never allow ‘competition’ within their own families. Within their own families cooperation is expected. That is, competition is reserved for the ‘family’ behavior with ‘others’ - them and us. They have difficulty embracing the larger family of man. They are separate.
(unedited - I’m out of town consulting)
all that hooting and screaming. you’d think they took the loyalty oath.
I worked for a big American corporation for 2 years. We could lose our jobs for discussing our salary with anyone. It was part of our “agreement”. And we didn’t know who the snitches were, so it was never talked about. But everyone was dying to know.
OMG– the braindead zombies clap and cheer.
When candidates like McCain spout talking points like “people want choice in their health care and free market provides those choices” or “people want us to win in Iraq and now we are on the verge of winning, the last thing we should do is pull out” or “a law requiring equal pay for women would only help trial lawyers” leads me to think that is a majority of American voters believe that crap in this day and age maybe we will get exactly the government we deserve.
Did mccain threaten to take his belt off?
RayC @ 32:
No we didn’t. We got the government the Supreme Court selected for us, and Diebold helped engineer for us. That is not the government we voted for.
Robin @ 15:
Have us as a country fallen so low in standards, that when someone exercises something that should be expected in a democracy: the free exchange of words seeking information with those seeking public office. Is now not seen as the norm but as an special occasion?
Somehow somewhere we took the wrong turn as a country, and if we do not pay attention and do our civic duty as citizens in a democracy, a similar post in 4 years time will surely read as: “How magnanimous of king McCain for not chopping the head off that insolent bolshevik brat.”
Dahgrostabphri @ 5:
…true…also, you can’t have defense attorneys (for the corporations) unless you have plaintiff’s lawyers suing in the first place…”1 attorney in town goes broke, 2 attorneys in town get rich”..neither gives a shit about anything except their fees.
bitter Edwin Hussein @ 31:
“Yay!!! McGigolo just shot down a 14 year old! He’s still got it!!!”
Leslie [Hussein] @ 34:
Unfortunatedly, I have to disagree: we have the government we deserve.
All that it takes for evil to happen is for citizens to do nothing, and that is exactly what has happened: Americans just sat down, and did what they do best: look the other way and act all shocked when the point they have so hard tried to ignore is pointed at them.
In many other countries there would have been revolution after the 2000 selection. Americans need to understand that democracy is not an spectator’s sport and that voting is only part of the civic duties.
Conservative ideology + equality + liberty does not add up.
Why do right wingers hate America?
Dahgrostabphri @ 5:
In all honesty, GOPers have been voting for the most part against their own interests for the better part of over a century. I don’t expect them to change, they are the proverbial whore who is all too happy to get screwed and who is too stupid to know that she is not the one supposed to pay for the screw.
It is just part of their playbook:
1 - Divide and conquer: find someone or something to focus the hate enough to vote against their interests.
2 - Present the proverbial carrot (aka the American Dream): find something the idiots can expect to achieve if they shut up, do as they told and don’t rock the boat.
That is why you will see West Virginia and Kentucky for example vote in droves for McCain, because well the uppity negro sure does not now his place (see tactic #1), and they are certain that any day now they will win the lottery and they sure don’t want to have to pay too many taxes on their hypothetical McMansion (see point #2).
And meanwhile, they get to miss that for the most part… poor white people have more in common with poor black people than with the rich asshole republican peddling the hate bullshit. And, chances are that they will never win the lottery so they should concentrate on the problems facing them right now: shitty economy, crappy schools, non existent health care, no prospects for future, etc. Rather than focusing on something that may or may not happen…
GOP - Grand Old Pappies
Asking McGrandpa the tough questions in an open forum! Give that girl a medal!
Wow…these repugs want to rip away every last shred of progress in the last 100 years…
Not on my fuckin watch…
ckerst @ 27:
She should consider herself lucky. In the past, his preferred method of silencing 14-year-old girls was to drop a bomb on them from 35,000 feet.
miss_kitty @ 25:
See, there’s the double standard. Obama “slanders” rural folks and we never hear the end of it. But McCain disparages a great American city and the media don’t bat an eye. Happens all the time.
andrew @ 36:
as a trial lawyer I take great umbrage with your remarks. Do I care about fees? Of course; I can’t do everything (in fact, with student loans, I can’t afford to do much) pro bono. Is it the only thing I care about? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t be in this business if I didn’t care about righting wrongs and helping people being dicked around by big business and their insurance companies.
I used to like McCain…now all I see is a bitter, feeble old man who’ll say anything and kiss up to the worst segments of his party–(the same segments we was often at odds with when he supposedly still had his integrity)–to get elected. Pathetic!
Why does McProlapsedRectum hate working women and children?
2 Lawyers walking down the street. An incredibly nice looking women walks by. The first lawyer says to the second one, “Boy, would I like to screw her”. The second lawyers says, “Really? Out of what?”.
Rusty Shackleford @45-
See, there’s the double standard. Obama “”"“slanders””"”" rural folks and we never hear the end of it. But McCain disparages a great American city and the media don’t bat an eye. Happens all the time.
FIFY!
(’cause you can’t put too many quotation marks around the word when used in that context :D ).