McCain Keeps Manhunt Money

As one of our commenters noted re: the post on McCain's gay chief of staff, it doesn't seem like a coincidence that on the same day the story broke we get the news that the McCain campaign, contrary to a previous report, is not returning the donation from the Manhunt co-owner, Johnathan Crutchley:

Indeed, while the contribution caused a bitter backlash against Crutchley inside the gay political world (and a backlash against that backlash), there was never any indication of a backlash from the Republican side. McCain has never been well suited to the role of culture warrior, and his aides declined at the time to comment on Crutchley or the contribution.

Indeed, Crutchley gave one of the cycle's clearer statements of McCain's own approach to divisive social issues.

"If we have an experienced, seasoned person defending the country in this dangerous age, we will be able to argue about the gay agenda later," he wrote.

That seems to be a line right from the campaign, a way of saying we, and our base, don't care about these things -- like the hypocrisy of being antigay but having gay chief of staff -- and won't respond to them. But I have a feeling that they're hearing from the religious conservatives on the Buse story.

McCain Returns Manhunt Money

John McCain has returned the money donated to him by Jonathan Crutchley, the chairman of Manhunt.net, who resigned amid the debacle over his donation. As Pam Spaulding notes, McCain is just further humiliating the Log Cabin Republicans and asinine people like Crutchley, who is now trying to do some p.r. spin for himself and his gay sex website business. The exposed former Manhunt chairman had previously described McCain as someone who would be "a better commander in chief" than Obama in this "dangerous age," and said we'd have to get to gay rights later. But now, according to Manhunt co-owner Larry Basile, Crutchley is apparently giving his money to Obama, since "John is too good for my money."

Oh, please. If this thing had never blown up Crutchley would still be giving his money to McCain, even though Mccain said in the past week that he couldn't have a VP running mate who supports "gay rights." (And McCain would be happy to take it, as long as the fundies didn't find out, because he's of course a fraud too.) And Crutchley's reasoning for giving McCain the money wasn't on gay issues anyway: it was the idiotic but still powerful fear card, with Crutchley claiming we needed a strong leader or whatever. So why not continue to back him now if gay issues were never the reason you had backed him before? McCain, after all, is not showing anything different by giving the money back, since he's been courting homophobes all along.

Crutchley is just trying to keep the obviously outraged membership of his site -- which I'm sure he's still making millions from though he resigned as "chairman" -- from bolting further. And don't you love how co-owner Larry Basile is professing shock over Crutchley's donation? ("Boy, was I embarrassed when I found out he gave $2,300,” he told the Boston Herald.) As if he and the other principles didn't know they'd made a Republican -- who is obviously outspoken and finds it an "insult" to be called a liberal -- as their chairman!

Right. Are we really to believe that Basile, when he went into business with Crutchley years ago, had no idea he was hooking up with a homocon? Surely he's much better at due diligence than that. I know, as I was an editor and columnist at the lefty, short-lived but influential OutWeek magazine in the early 90s, where, as Basile now touts, Basile was treasurer (and part owner.) One thing I know about Basile is that he's a shrewd, smart businessman who knows everything that's going on with everyone.

And what took McCain so long to give the money back? Probably wanted to wait until the weekend so as not to get any press. As it was, the media -- his base -- had pretty much blacked it out for days. The only place you saw discussion of it during the week was on the gay blogs. Kudos to Andy Towle at Towleroad for revealing much of this and riding the story.