Meghan McCain, for the win!

I have to say, I'm building a small girl-crush on Meghan McCain. During her father's presidential campaign last year, she kept a running blog; while I disagreed with her politics, I had to applaud her for communicating 21st Century-style (something the rest of the McCain campaign couldn't seem to get going...). McCain's been blogging for The Daily Beast, and emerging as a popular voice for younger, non-crazy conservatives. For instance, she recently wrote that she doesn't like Ann Coulter.

In response to that, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham had this to say about the daughter of the U.S. Senator and Republican presidential nominee: she's a "valley girl gone awry," and she's "plus-sized."

MCCAIN (on MSNBC): And I think there’s an extreme on both parties and I hate extreme. I don’t understand. I have friends that are the most radically conservative and radically liberal people possibly ever and we all get along. We can find a middle ground.

INGRAHAM (mocking): Ok, I was really hoping that I was going to get that role in the Real World, but then I realized that, well, they don’t like plus-sized models. They only like the women who look a certain way. And on this 50th anniversary of Barbie, I really have something to say.

I was going to write a long post about the tendency to try and shut women down by insulting their appearance rather than arguing against their actual positions, and maybe point out that if Meghan McCain weighed 400 pounds and had a goiter and pox all over her bald head, she'd still have a right to express her opinion. But I thought McCain herself put it well.

It's also pretty sad that any political "expert" would so automatically dismiss the voice of a woman who - unlike Ingraham - was actually out on the campaign trail interacting with real live voters for most of the last year. When politicians - conservatives AND liberals - cling to idealogy and demonize people who think differently and lose, and when those who build coalitions succeed, just maybe it's not a bad idea to listen to the kinds of thing Ms. McCain is writing.

And by the way, if she's fat, then I'm an orca whale.

UPDATE: Ingraham just won't quit. In this blog post, she calls McCain a "useful idiot" and posts the full segment from her show that I referenced above, apparently thinking that airing MORE of her mocking is some kind of defense. Fascinating.