Pity Meghan McCain...
See this, from the New York Post. The column is, of course, pure farce, but judging from 90% of the responses to it, you'd never know. Those folks took it far too seriously, which is a defect all liberals have; they haven't got a sense of humor.

Then there is the picture of Ms. McCain, which I assume, was the inspiration for the whole thing.

You see, in the last few months, Ms. McCain has bemoaned the fact that her father's association with such rabid conservatives like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh (as if John McCain can be considered a conservative!) has cramped her style. In her blog (which I can't be bothered to link to) and in recent interviews, Ms. McCain has complained that politics has ruined her social life. All the really cute guys lose interest in her because of politics. Either they just want to meet her father, or she has to endure hours of "how can you associate with Ann Coulter?" lectures, and it's very annoying. She's said so. Repeatedly. Only now, she stands to make a living for it, writing for whatever online rag Tina Brown is publishing these days (I can't be bothered to link to that, either).

She's making her displeasure known by criticizing said conservatives, and denouncing them. Just to make certain you get the message that she's rebelling, she'll tell you that gay marriage is all cool an' stuff, and that Obama is The Bomb. Publicly.

That's her right, I guess. But the underlying reason she does this is not any actual political belief of principle; she does it so that she'll seem cool and all that much more attractive to the social set she seeks entry to.

I don't always agree with Coulter and Rush, either, but the truth is they're often right. Conservatives, on the whole, are right. They have 10,000 years of history on their side. Where I split from them is on the idea that all of our moral and societal ills can be cured by a government-sponsored imposition of a Calvinist brand of Christianity which went out of fashion in about 1650 or so. Social ills are cured at home, with strong parents and families, not by the government. Let the churches do their work where they do it best: in church. Morality will never be legislated (despite all the morality laws on the books and the convictions and punishments for offenses, immoral behavior still occurs), and this is where the Republican party makes it's mistake; it allies itself with people who believe it IS the government's job to install and enforce Christian morals, values and ethics.

But at the end of the day, while I can certainly understand Meghan McCain's angst -- why, when I was younger, girls wouldn't talk to me because I had pimples, or I couldn't get with the in-crowd because I didn't wear Capezios and skinny leather ties, or hung around with some geeky people -- this is basically what her argument amounts to), I eventually found my own groove.

My advice to Miss McCain; if you need to change or compromise to gain the acceptance of people who find you or your associations unfathomable based on some shallow criteria, perhaps they aren't the sort of people you need to be hanging out with in the first place. In the meantime, you're only embarrassing yourself.