Cindy McCain to Appear in Lance Black's Play that Supports Gay Marriage

John McCain is already on the outs with many of the Christofascists and Tea Party crowd in the Republican Party.  Now, this folks will have yet another reason to engage in a spittle fleck rant.  McCain's wife, Cindy will be acting in the play “8” written by Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black which deals with same-sex marriage and prohibitions in Arizona, California and other states.The Phoenix Business Journal notes the play and Cindy McCain's involvement:

Cindy Hensley McCain — the wife of U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and chairwoman of the Hensley & Co. beer distribution company — is slated to appear in a play next month at the Herberger Theater in Phoenix that supports same-sex marriage.

Some other notable Arizona political, media and business names are also in the play “8” which deals with same-sex marriage and prohibitions in Arizona, California and other states. The play gets its name from California’s Proposition 8 gay marriage ban.

John McCain opposes laws allowing gay marriage, while his wife has been a vocal supporter of same-sex marriages.

Hensley is the state’s largest Anheuser-Busch distributor. Mrs. McCain took over as chair and controlling owner of the Phoenix-based company in 2000 after her father, Jim Hensley’s death. She also has commercial real estate holdings in the Valley.

The Republican senator has said in the past that he and his wife, as well as his outspoken daughter Meghan McCain, have differing views on gay marriage. Cindy and Meghan McCain appeared in “No on Prop. 8” advertisements in 2008. The measure was passed by voters but was undone by a federal court. It is one of the same-sex marriage cases recently being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Christofascist commentary should be entertaining.

 

Cindy McCain Speaks Out Against DADT

UPDATED: Things must have gotten REALLY hot in the McCain household. Now Cindy McCain claims she still supports DADT notwithstanding her unequivocal statements in the video in this post. Perhaps she needs to remind her husband that while he's the Senator, she's the one with the serious money, not him. Invoke the "golden rule" if you will.

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Conversations must be interesting around the McCain household what with Meghan McCain supporting gay marriage and now Cindy McCain joining in a NoH8 Campaign's Anti-Bullying PSA and in the process slamming DADT. Sadly, unlike these strong women in his family, John McSenile continues to kiss the bigoted asses of the homophobes and Christianist even though most detest him. As Towleroad reports (and as can be seen below) Cindy McCain specifically mentions DADT in her portion of the PSA. Would that there were more conservatives that would face the fact that religious tradition has no place in the civil laws in a nation that claims to guarantee freedom of religion for all of its citizens. These highlights from Towleroad:
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The NoH8 campaign has just put out an anti-bullying PSA highlighting a range of topics contributing to the way gay and lesbian youth are perceived by their peers, including religion-based bigotry, the disciminatory ban on blood donation by gay men, marriage inequality, and bans on gay adoption.
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Notable is Cindy McCain speaking out about gays not being able to serve openly in the military considering her husband is perhaps the biggest impediment in the U.S. Senate to getting the ban lifted. McCain has threatened a filibuster if DADT is attached to the Defense authorization bill, and was recently reported to be trying to make a deal to strip the DADT provision from the bill.
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Kudos to Cindy McCain. Here's the video (McCain first appears at about the 0.52 minute mark):

Cindy McCain Poses for NOH8 Campaign

Photographer (and major cutie) Adam Bouska - who I interviewed once a couple of years back and posted his responses on this blog - has scored a major coup that will no doubt have the Bible beaters in the GOP base absolutely apoplectic - Cindy McCain (wife of Senator John McCain) has posed for the NOH8 campaign photo series. Tony Perkins, Don Wildmon, and James Dobson, among others have probably wet themselves. Congratulations Adam and congratulations to Cindy McCain for doing the right thing and speaking out against religious based bigotry. Here are some highlights from the Advocate:

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The NOH8 Campaign on Wednesday announced that Cindy McCain, the wife of former Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, has posed to demonstrate her support of marriage equality. NOH8’s Adam Bouska has photographed thousands of subjects since California passed Proposition 8 in 2008. All of the subjects are photographed with duct tape over their mouths to symbolize that their voices aren’t being heard on the subject of marriage equality.
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Writes the NOH8 blog: “In the year since we’ve started the NOH8 Campaign, we’ve been surprised at some of the different individuals who have approached us showing their support. Few, though, have surprised us more than Cindy McCain — the wife of Senator John McCain and mother to vocal marriage equality advocate Meghan McCain. The McCains are one of the most well-known Republican families in recent history, and for Mrs. McCain to have reached out to us to offer her support truly means a lot.
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An interview with Adam Bouska about the shoot can be found here. Way to go Adam!!!

Cindy McCain, Marie Antoinette and Sarah Palin

Some days Maureen Dowd just cracks me up with her wit and skill as a wordsmith. Her latest column in the New York Times which looks at the tone deafness - read stupidity - of the McCain/Palin ticket in terms of botching the effort to depict Barack Obama as the elitist instead of themselves. Between Cindy McCain's appearance in a $300,000 out fit and jewels at the GOP Convention and "Caribou Barbie" Palin's receipt of $150,000 in clothes - not to mention her $32,800 for hair styling and makeup during the first two weeks of October - the anti-Obama effort falls more than flat. Particularly when contrasted with Michelle Obama who appeared on The View in a $148 off the rack dress. Here are some highlights from Dowd's column:

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McCain advisers have been scathing about the “sexism” of critics who dismiss Sarah Palin as Caribou Barbie. How odd then, to learn that McCain advisers have been treating their own vice presidential candidate like Valentino Barbie, dressing her up in fancy clothes and endlessly playing with her hair.

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The Republicans’ attempt to make the case that Barack Obama is hoity-toity and they’re hoi polloi has fallen under the sheer weight of the stunning numbers: The McCains own 13 cars, eight homes and access to a corporate jet, and Cindy had her Marie Antoinette moment at the convention. Vanity Fair calculated that her outfit cost $300,000, with three-carat diamond earrings worth $280,000, an Oscar de la Renta dress valued at $3,000, a Chanel white ceramic watch clocking in at $4,500 and a four-strand pearl necklace worth between $11,000 and $25,000. While presenting herself as an I’m-just-like-you hockey mom frugal enough to put the Alaska state plane up for sale on eBay, Palin made her big speech at the convention wearing a $2,500 cream silk Valentino jacket that the McCain staff had gotten her at Saks.

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At that point, Palin should have been savvy enough to tell those doing her makeover that she was a Wal-Mart mom. The sartorial upgrade was bound to turn into a strategy downgrade, as Palin pressed her case as a homespun gal who was ever so much more American than the elite, foreignish Obama, while she was gussied up in Italian couture.

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Republicans once more charged the media with sexism for reporting on Palin’s Imelda Marcos closet. “No one would blink if this was a male candidate buying Brooks Brothers suits,” said William F. B. O’Reilly, a G.O.P. consultant. . . . Palin already seemed on top of her grooming before the McCain campaign made her traveling makeup artist, Amy Strozzi, the highest-paid individual on the campaign for the first two weeks of October. Ms. Strozzi, who earned an Emmy nomination for her war paint skills on the TV show “So You Think You Can Dance,” made $22,800 for the first half of this month.

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Governor Palin, who used to get her hair done at the Beehive in Wasilla and shop at an Anchorage consignment shop called Out of the Closet, paid her traveling hairstylist — recommended by Cindy McCain — $10,000 for the first half of October. . . . In The New York Times Magazine today, Robert Draper reveals that the campaign also hired a former New York stage and screen actress, Priscilla Shanks, to be her voice coach for the convention.

And Who's the Elitist??

Vanity Fair has a brief column that shows the ridiculousness of John McShame trying to paint Obama as an elitist. Obviously, he and his campaign think all voters are morons. Here is what Vanity Fair reports:

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One of the persistent memes in the Republican line of attack against Barack Obama is the notion that he is an elitist, whereas the G.O.P. represent real working Americans like Levi “F-in’ Redneck” Johnston. It caught our attention, then, when First Lady Laura Bush and would-be First Lady Cindy McCain took the stage Tuesday night wearing some rather fancy designer clothes. So we asked our fashion department to price out their outfits.

Cindy McCain's Half Sister: "I'm Voting for Barack Obama"

I recently posted a piece about the way Cindy McCain has written off her half-sisters after walking away with just about all of her their late father's tremendous wealth. Kathleen Hensley Portalski seems to be repaying Cindy for her coldness and regular comments that she was raised an only child. I may not get along wonderfully with all of my siblings, but I don't go around basically telling people that they do not even exist. Does the nation need an out of touch president and a cold, aloof wife in the White House? Here are some highlights from US magazine:
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Cindy McCain's half sister is planning on voting for Barack Obama, she tells Usmagazine.com. "I'm not voting for McCain," Kathleen Hensley Portalski tells Us. "I have a different political standpoint. "I'm voting for Obama," the Phoenix resident says. "I think his proposals to improve the country are more positive and I'm not a big war believer."

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"She's kinda cool, standoffish," Portalski tells Us of her half sister. Portalski also doesn't expect Cindy McCain to make an effort to reconcile their relationship. "She never has, and I doubt that she ever will," she tells Us.

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Portalski's son Nathan, a 45-year-old aerospace machinist, is also backing Obama. "I wouldn't vote for John McCain if he was a Democrat," he tells Us. "I would not vote at all before I'd vote for him. "I question whether Cindy is someone I'd want to see in the White House as first lady," he adds.

John and Cindy McCain - Never Let the Truth Get in Your Way

A disturbing pattern seems to be emerging with BOTH John and Cindy McCain. Much like the Chimperator, they simply change the true facts to fit their needs or make a story sound better or more dramatic. The untruths range from John McCain's disingenuousness about his affair with Cindy BEFORE he was divorced from his first wife, to Cindy's convenient erasure of the existence of her half sisters, to claiming to having met with Mother Teresa when no such meeting occurred.

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After eight years of an almost pathologically dishonest president, does the country need more of this dishonesty? In my view, the answer is a resounding NO!! Increasingly, a McCain presidency looks more and more to be a poorly retreaded Bush third term. My comments on McCain's divorce can be found here and here. With respect to Cindy McCain's disappearing half sisters, here are some highlights from the Washington Post:

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When Cindy McCain talks about growing up, she usually refers to herself as an "only child" -- a phrase that ignores the existence of her half sisters. "It's terribly painful," Kathleen Hensley Portalski said yesterday. "It is as if she is the 'real' daughter. I am also a real daughter."

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Portalski and McCain are both children of the late Jim Hensley, the Arizona businessman who founded one of the largest beer distributorships in the nation. Kathleen, 65, is the product of Hensley's first marriage in the 1930s to Mary Jeanne Parks. Hensley divorced Parks for Marguerite "Smitty" Johnson, whom he met at a West Virginia hospital in World War II and married in 1945. Cindy was born nine years later.

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The half sisters had little contact growing up and have not spoken since Hensley's funeral in 2000. In his will, he left just $10,000 to his older daughter; Cindy inherited her father's multimillion-dollar fortune.

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Portalski told our colleague Kimberly Kindy that she stood quietly by for decades while her father lavished attention on his second family. But the past few months -- with Cindy McCain's glowing childhood memories and repeated references to being her father's only child -- finally became too much. "I was his family, too," she said from her home in Phoenix. "I saw him at Christmas and I spent my birthdays with him."

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But there's more: Cindy McCain has another half sister. Before her marriage to Hensley, Johnson had a daughter, Dixie Burd, by a previous relationship. Burd, who is much older than Cindy, could not be reached for comment.

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One would think that having walked off with nearly her father's entire fortune, the disingenuous Cindy McCain could at least acknowledge her half sisters' existence. Sadly, that's more than Cindy is apparently willing to do. Erasing her half sister's existence isn't Cindy's only problem with telling the truth. Apparently to gain brownie points she's furthering a myth about a meeting she had with Mother Teresa in connection with her adoption of an orphan. As Andrew Sullivan discusses, the only problem is that the meeting never occurred. Here are highlights from Andrew's blog:

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Part of the McCain Celebrity, as packaged for the evangelical base, is the rescue of two Bangladeshi girls at the behest of Mother Theresa, one of whom, Bridget, they subsequently adopted. During my live-blogging of Saddleback, I described the McCain adoption story as "peerless." And it is indeed an admirable, selfless thing - and a completely legitimate aspect of a candidate's life to be part of his campaign message. The story of how Mother Teresa talked them into it makes it all the more poignant. The only trouble is: it's not true:

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But a source who was with McCain on that 1991 trip, and who asked that his name not be used because of prior legal dealings with the McCain family, says that Mother Teresa was not at the orphanage when Cindy decided to bring the two girls home.

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I note that this false story was on the McCain website and has since been corrected. Now, the question is whether and when Cindy McCain met with Mother Teresa: A McCain source acknowledged that Cindy McCain did not meet Mother Teresa during the 1991 trip to Bangladesh but said McCain did meet her later on, although the source could not say when or where. The campaign has since reworded the reference to the adoption on its website.

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Can we nail down the date of that meeting? Or are these questions no one should dare ask of a POW war hero?

The Candidate We Still Don’t Know

Frank Rich has another great column in today's New York Times that looks at the presidential race and the fact that the real John McCain remains largely unknown. The man has flip flopped all over the place and shown such a willingness to pander and sell his soul that at this point I don't know what the man truly believes. And I supported him in 2000. He's definitely NOT the same man now and I don't know if it's because he IS getting senile or that he wants to win so badly that he will say and do anything he thinks will foster a win. I know that perhaps I am too much of a maverick - to use the press' lame and unfounded term for McCain - because I will NOT sell my soul. I guess that's why I decided never to run for office again after my school board run in 1994 when I was painted as "Christian Right" - which shows how utterly lazy and stupid the press can be. Here are some column highlights (I love the term "bloviation"):

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AS I went on vacation at the end of July, Barack Obama was leading John McCain by three to four percentage points in national polls. When I returned last week he still was. But lo and behold, a whole new plot twist had rolled off the bloviation assembly line in those intervening two weeks: Obama had lost the election!

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It seems almost churlish to look at some actual facts. No presidential candidate was breaking the 50 percent mark in mid-August polls in 2004 or 2000. Obama’s average lead of three to four points is marginally larger than both John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s leads then (each was winning by one point in Gallup surveys). Obama is also ahead of Ronald Reagan in mid-August 1980 (40 percent to Jimmy Carter’s 46). At Pollster.com, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral votes in current toss-up states and still lose the election.

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The truth is we have no idea what will happen in November. But for the sake of argument, let’s posit that one thread of the Obama-is-doomed scenario is right: His lead should be huge in a year when the G.O.P. is in such disrepute that at least eight of the party’s own senatorial incumbents are skipping their own convention, the fail-safe way to avoid being caught near the Larry Craig Memorial Men’s Room at the Twin Cities airport.

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So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is.. . . . What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. . . . With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

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On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.

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McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. . . . . On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.

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Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.” Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.

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[W]e still haven’t been inside Cindy McCain’s tax returns, all her multiple homes or private plane. The Los Angeles Times reported in June that Hensley & Company, the enormous beer distributorship she controls, “lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety,” in opposition to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The McCain campaign told The Times that Mrs. McCain’s future role in her beer empire won’t be revealed before the election.

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As everyone says, polls are meaningless in the summers of election years. Especially this year, when there’s one candidate whose real story has yet to be fully told.

John McCain's Marital Infidelity and Untrue Statements About It

A while back I did a post of John McCain's - in my view - very shabby treatment of his first wife, Carol who lives in nearby Virginia Beach. I did so because I find it ironic that the so-called "family values" crowd that wants strict application of Biblical passages to denigrate gays is steadily coming to rally around McCain, the former adulterer as their standard bearer. Funny how gays never get any slack on Bible passages whereas McCain will be getting a free pass on the strictures against divorce and adultery. Now, the Los Angeles Times has a story on the McCain affair and divorce that is of interest in that it reveals that McCains public statements lo and behold do not agree with the court documents, including the fact that McCain and Cindy got their marriage license while McCain was still married to Carol. Thus, McCain has added lying to his Biblicaly condemned misdeeds. To be clear, I am not anti-divorce and believe there are times when it is the only solution to a marriage that is not working. What I am against is the hypocrisy of McCain and the Christianists who as is too often the case apply one set of rules for gays and a totally different one for themselves. Here are some story highlights:

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In a written statement, she [Nancy Reagan] described McCain as "a good friend for over 30 years." But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by McCain's decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship. The Reagans rushed to help Carol, finding her a new home in Southern California with the family of Reagan aide Edwin Meese III and a series of political and White House jobs to ease her through that difficult time. McCain, who is about to become the GOP nominee, has made several statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict with the public record.

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"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980." An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

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Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

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But two years later, while on a trip as a Navy liaison with the Senate, McCain spied Hensley at the Honolulu reception. In a recent television interview with Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show," Cindy McCain joked about how the Navy captain had pursued her. "He kind of chased me around . . . the hors d'oeuvre table," she said. "I was trying to get something to eat and I thought, 'This guy's kind of weird.' I was kind of trying to get away from him."John McCain was 42; she was 24.

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Carol McCain was distraught at being blindsided by her husband's intention to end their marriage, said her friends in the Reagan circle."They [the Reagans] weren't happy with him," Fitzwater said. Carol McCain "was this little, frail person. . . . She was brokenhearted." By that time, Nancy Reagan had come to Carol McCain's aid, hiring her as a press assistant in the 1980 presidential campaign. When the Reagans moved to Washington, she was named director of the White House Visitors Office.

Lifestyle of The Rich & Out of Touch McCains

The last eight years have seen the USA saddled with a president, the Chimperator, who not only believes that he has some direct line to God and that God speaks to him urging him on a crusade against the infidel, but who also has no freaking clue as to the real world reality in which most Americans find themselves. Worse yet, since he does not read newspapers, watch television news or engage in much of anything else that might burst his isolated bubble. Now, with John McCain, it appears that the nation will have the option to elect yet another utterly clueless president should John McCain win election and thereby burden itself with a third Bush term in yet more ways. It is dufficult to address problems when one doesn't know they are occurring or have any ability to understand what the common citizen is experiencing.

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John and Cindy McCain's failure to pay the property taxes on their million dollar La Jolla beach condominium just goes to underscore how removed from reality is the world of John and Cindy. With so many houses - now confirmed to number 10 - what is a person to do? McCain v. Minnesota has a story that shows just how rough it is being burdened with all those pesky homes which have an aggregate value of $13,823,269.00. Here are a few highlights of "common man" John McCain's real estate holdings:

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McCain’s Primary Residence: In 2006, McCains purchased two condominiums in Phoenix for $4,666,814. According to property records from Maricopa County, Arizona, the McCains spent $4,666,814 Condominium in Phoenix, AZ in 2006. Officially, the sale was made to The Cindy Hensley McCain Family Trust on October 18, 2006. (2211 E Camelback Rd., Units 1105& 1106, 85016) [Maricopa County Property Records] The McCains Converted the Two Condominiums Into A “Single Dwelling.” According to The Arizona Republic, “Property records show that Cindy [McCain’s] trust recently bought a condo at the Residences at 2211 Camelback for $4.66 million.” The paper added, “The deal was actually for two condos that could be combined to one space of 6,000 to 7,000 square feet.

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Beachfront Condo in La Jolla, California: McCains Own A $1 Million Beachfront Condominium in La Jolla, California. According to John McCain’s Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure, the McCains own a condominium in La Jolla, California valued at over $1 million. The La Jolla property is held in the Hensley Survivors Trust. (8263 Camino Del Oro #379, 92037) [2007 Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure ; San Diego County Property Records] [Photo found at www.beachagent.com, accessed on 4/2/08]

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High-Rise Condo in Arlington, Virginia: The McCains Own A $847,800 High-Rise Condominium in Arlington, Virginia. According to property records from Arlington County, Virginia, the McCains own a $847,800 High-Rise Condominium in Arlington, Virginia. The condominium is officially the property of the Cindy Hensley McCain Family Trust. (1300 Crystal Drive #1702S, 22202) [Arlington County Property Records]

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Does anyone seriously believe that McCain, the son and grandson of famous admirals - believe me, admirals live pretty well based upon the ones around here past and present - has any idea what it's like to be struggling to pay a mortgage, cloth children and otherwise live on an average person's income?

McSenile - McCain Four Years Delinquent on Condo Real Estate Taxes

The late Ann Richards made fun of the Chimperator's dad and the silver spoon he had been born with sticking out of his mouth. Well, it looks like John McCain is equally out of touch with reality. Poor John and Cindy have so many homes, I guess they just cannot keep track of them all or make sure the property taxes get paid on all of them. It seems that the McCains's beach front condo in La Jolla just got lost in the shuffle of so many homes. One would think with her $100 million fortune, Cindy could hire someone to keep track of her property tax obligations. Is it just me, or do we really want another Chimperator clone for president, or isn't it time for a president who has some remote clue as to how most of us live in the country? Sadly, many people live a pretty much hand to mouth existence, while John and Cindy cannot even keep track of all their properties (they own at least seven properties according to Newsweek). It's not so much the amount of the unpaid taxes as it is the excessiveness of having seven or more homes. I think I'd notice if I did not receive my property tax bill for four years. Here are some highlights:

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When you're poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you're rich, it's hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It's a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees. Mrs. McCain is a beer heiress with an estimated $100 million fortune and, along with her husband, she owns at least seven properties, including condos in California and Arizona.

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San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain's trust, were returned by the post office. According to a McCain campaign aide, who requested anonymity when discussing a private matter, an elderly aunt of Mrs. McCain's lives in the condo, and the bank that manages the trust has not been receiving tax bills on the property.

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Dan McAllister, treasurer- tax collector for San Diego County, said . . . ."Under the law, the property owner is responsible for keeping the address current. We're only as good as the information we are given."

The Wife John McCain Callously Left Behind

That's the title of a story in the UK's Daily Mail about John McCain's first wife who he left so that he could marry a much younger heiress (Cindy is 18 years his junior) only a month later. It is a sad commentary on the U. S. mainstream media that one has to look to foreign news outlets to find stories that ought to be widely circulated here in the USA. It's also very sad that with a history like this McCain is trying to brown nose the Christianists claiming he supports "family values" and the sanctity of marriage. Oh, but I forgot - the evangelical Christians have some of the highest divorce rates in the USA, so I guess a divorce like McCain's is fine by such selective standards. So much for abiding by the inerrant word of the Bible. The Christianists only believe in inerrancy when it facilitates gay-bashing. And as for the local connection, like so many with past Navy ties Carol McCain lives in nearby Virginia Beach. Here are a few story highlights:

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McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children. But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children. And yet, had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain’s first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965.

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[W]hen McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries. When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter. Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

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But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.

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‘My accident is well recorded. I had 23 operations, I am five inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months. It was just awful, but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce. ‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does.’ Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.

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In 1979 – while still married to Carol – he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage. Carol and her children were devastated. ‘It was a complete surprise,’ says Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan aide. ‘They never displayed any difficulties between themselves. I know the Reagans were quite shocked because they loved and respected both Carol and John.’

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Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit. ‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. ‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better. ‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’