In a characteristic bout of classlessness, the right-wing blog Ace of Spades wrote a horrible little post about a new column by Daily Beast columnist Meghan McCain. From Ace's March 14 post, headlined “Meghan McCain Attempts Humor With About As Much Success As You'd Guess” (emphasis added):

Less ha-ha and more ta-ta. Stick to what you're enhanced at.

As (I think) the late lamented Greg Giraldo said, Meghan McCain is to comedy what Einstein was to comedy.

Incidentally, she goes after Sarah Palin as if the poor woman were a pork chop sauteed in Haagen-Dasz [sic] and Axe body spray.

This seems to be the go-to topic for un-bright women posing dishonestly as conservatives.

Keep trying, Meghan! Hopefully you'll find something you're good at some day!

This isn't the first time someone on the right has used cheap sexist attacks against McCain. Media Matters has documented several instances of right-wing bloggers belittling her because of her body, including referring to her as “Meggie 'Big Mac' McCain” and a “self-indulgent set of mega-breasts.” The attacks also haven't been limited to conservative men. Guest-hosting The O'Reilly Factor in March 2009, Laura Ingraham showcased a supposedly satirical segment from her radio show where she called McCain a “plus-sized model.”

There's also Jeff Poor of the Media Research Center, who commented “Haha” while re-tweeting, “I swear, if Meghan McCain gets any dumber she'll be drooling on her boobs.”

Ace of Spades has gotten a lot of mileage out of calling McCain stupid in the past, and Ace is no stranger to reducing McCain to nothing more than a body part, at one point writing, "[Y]ou have so many followers partly because an employee of [Michelle] Malkin's (Allah) is sorta obsessed with your dumbness and maybe wants to snork you in the squeaker."

Then there's this post headlined: “Megan McCain: Republicans Don't Like Me Because I'm Young, I Have Tattoos, I Go to Biker Rallies, I Listen to Coldplay, and I Post Pictures of My Big Fake-Looking Push-Up-Bra'd Boobies on Twitter.” In the post, Ace comments, “A lot of people (such as myself) didn't really spend much time evaluating whether or not Megan McCain was attractive or hittable or cheesecake-worthy. A picture like this, however, sort of puts that question front and center, and she should have expected some number of people ... to have come down on the 'Negatory' side of the line.”

UPDATE: Commendably, Ace issued an apology for yesterday's post.

Yeah, basically, I think that whole post sucked and descended into juvenile taunting and not even good juvenile taunting. And while a couple of the jokes were decent enough to justify breaking the typical rule against cheap shots, the whole thing, in total, with its mean-for-meanness'-sake unfunny jabs was in fact “sexist” (I just never really got off that, did?) and pretty brain-dead.

So I apologize to Meghan McCain, for what it's worth, and will say of Media Matters “It's a fair cop.” It was a crappy post, and a very thoughtless post (in both meanings of the word), and sexist, and by and large “brain-dead,” on vituperative autopilot, and if I'd given it five minutes to breathe before hitting “POST” I would have edited it down to almost nothing.

I screwed up. I was nastier than I would have liked to have been and I can't even claim the thing was so studded with comedy gems it was “worth it.” It wasn't.

It was unfair and mean, and definitely not for the highlight reel.