Susan Estrich
Saturday, July 16, 2005

Story Continues Below

  You know how that works: It MUST be good. Not by my lights. I hear it's awful, with unnecessary montages of naked women's breasts, before they all sleep with our hero, for his endless meaningless sex – and, of course, endless, endless swear words just for the sake of it, which is right up my son's alley (he's 12) and the sort of thing that bores and embarrasses my 15-year-old daughter and me.

According to the movie's producers, they're "swimming against the tide" by making this "original R-rated comedy" in which, according to the previews, the stars get fondled at the dinner table and no pretense is even made of being family friendly. Like many parents, I suppose, I was unaware that there was a tide going in another direction.

If John McCain were just another United States senator, you might say that it was quite a star turn, particularly for a Republican who is actually quite conservative on social issues. And since it's not just another senator, but John McCain, a man whose life story is of courage and service, maybe you'd say that it's part of what makes him such an appealing figure across generational lines. As he explained it, "It impressed my kids." I'm sure it will impress mine, too, if they convince their father to take them.

But McCain isn't just another senator. He is currently – according to the polls, at least – the "front-runner" in the Republican race for the 2008 nomination, although Republicans are sharply divided as to whether that can hold in a process dominated by party regulars and Christian conservatives. As a perceived maverick and moderate, McCain certainly has his work cut out for him in a process that is skewed against him, as the 2000 primary campaign amply demonstrated.

It was John McCain – the senator, not the character – who held hearings prior to the 2000 elections, as everyone is now pointing out, to take Hollywood to task for making R-rated movies and marketing them to teenagers. The result was a commitment by the industry to enforce more strictly the R restriction – with the unintended consequence, some would argue, that PG-13 movies got to be more sexual and more violent.

Whether or not that is the case, this movie was conceived of as R rated from the get-go, and McCain is apparently the only elected official to join the cast. "Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and me – we're all pretty much starring roles," McCain joked to the press on Tuesday.

In 2008, one friend of Hillary's told me, he'll be 72 years old, he'll have had cancer twice, and he has a reputation for being erratic. Remember that Chelsea joke? It was a terrible joke – about Janet Reno being her father – that simultaneously insulted both a teenage girl and her mother. What could he have been thinking when he told that? I know, Hillary has told off-color jokes, but sticking a knife in the back of a kid?

Will the right laugh off the senator's latest cameo as just that? Or will they ask what he was thinking when, having campaigned against R-rated films marketed to kids, he agreed to appear in one.

In the end, what may be at issue is not whether conservatives share McCain's sense of humor, but whether they come to question his judgment.

COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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