Meghan McCain Exposes Herself for Playboy

Republicans, we really did dodge a bullet in 2008. Not because the election prevented a Sarah Palin vice presidency. Given her record as governor, Palin would have been a great VP. The bullet we dodged turns out to be who would have been the first daughter.

Meghan McCain has posed for Playboy. But not in the way that you think. Ace has the photo and a fine fisking. As photos go, it’s very nice and even demure. It’s in the interview that McCain exposes herself.

To Ace’s takedown I’ll just add, this quote would have come from the first daughter, if John McCain had won.

PLAYBOY: What’s up with your Hunter S. Thompson obsession? Wouldn’t he have hated your conservative views?

MCCAIN: I love, love, love Hunter. I read Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail in high school and loved his take on politics. I love the way he wrote with such disregard for authority and the status quo. I’ve been considering getting his quote “Buy the ticket, take the ride” tattooed on my body, but I haven’t decided. I told my friend, and she said it sounds really sexual, so we’ll see.

It’s a tattoo, fercrimenyssake. Where else would it have gone?

And with due apologies to legitimate Hunter S. Thompson fans, is there a more cliched writer to quote from the second half of the last century than him? Wanna sound like a knowledgeable rebel, you quote Hunter S. Thompson. That’s how it works. Quote him while wearing a Che shirt and you’re practically Johnny Depp himself.

Real countercultural rebels quote Jesus, by the way.

If McCain’s devotion to Thompson is real, what then to make of this attitude?

PLAYBOY: Do you ever think twice about partying in public for fear it will show up on Gawker the next morning?

MCCAIN: Oh, I can’t live like that. I do get paranoid when I’m wearing low-cut dresses that somebody’s going to take a picture and put it on the internet and be like, “Meghan was showing off her breasts again.” But you know, showing a little cleavage can make a girl feel sexy too. Like Jessica Simpson says, if you got it, you should flaunt it once in a while. I’ve been pretty open about the fact that I like to go out and have a good time with friends. I’ve never done drugs, and I never would. So there’s that. But what am I supposed to do, stay in and read a book?

A wasted mind is a terrible thing.

The biggest shame of all of this is that, while John McCain’s sons serve honorably in the military as did their fathers before them, Meghan McCain — equal parts Paris Hilton and Snookie, combined with the self-awareness of your typical self-promoting Hollywood Z-lister — is the family’s young spokesperson in places like Playboy and the Daily Beast. She’s not bright enough to figure out just why that is.

Update: Shame on me for flying right past the part where she unironically quoted Jessica Simpson for a pearl of wisdom.