NY Times Reporter Recalls John McCain’s ‘Prison Rape’ Joke
If Sen. John McCain gets around to reading bestselling author Mark Leibovich‘s upcoming book, you couldn’t blame him for being a little unsettled by a fleeting detail that appears just two pages into it.
The book, Citizens of the Green Room: Profiles in Courage and Self-Delusion, is almost entirely made up of previously-published profiles Leibovich wrote on well-known public figures like Hillary Clinton, Chris Matthews and Glenn Beck.
There is, however, an introduction that’s new and it recalls a couple offbeat moments with some of Leibovich’s subjects.
Leibovich, also chief national correspondent for New York Times Magazine, describes how in his early days as a reporter for the Washington Post, his editor would ask him about the people he was covering.
An excerpt from a pre-released version of the book, as obtained by Mediaite:
Steve (the editor) later observed that very little of what I shared with him in his office would ever wind up in my stories. Quite often there was good reason: ground rules (they were off the record), or good taste (former POW John McCain telling me a joke about prison rape), or the fact that Mike Huckabee’s scatological humor was ill-suited to a profile pegged to his new diet and nutrition book.
It’s worth noting that back during the 2008 presidential election, when McCain was the Republican nominee, a rumor surfaced that during his first bid for U.S. Senate in the 1980s, he told some audiences about a joke involving a woman raped by an ape. The McCain campaigned denied it.
There’s also an anecdote in the book, again from the 2008 campaign when Clinton was seeking the Democratic nomination, recalling a time Leibovich asked her which state she would most like represent in the Senate, if not New York.
“I like all the states,” Clinton replies. (Leibovich forgives her for the non-answer, noting that such a stupid detail could actually come back to haunt her political career.)
Citizens of the Green Room publishes Nov. 13.
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