Reading The Pictures: <em>Not Till You've Walked In My Shoes</em>

"The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son while he was serving sent a cold chill through my body, let me tell you,'' Mrs. McCain said, in an introduction before Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin delivered speeches at Lehigh. "I would suggest that Senator Obama change shoes with me for just one day.'' -- (McCain, Palin Step Up Attacks on Obama - NYT)

It's just desperate and sad the way McCain uses daughter Meghan to create this all-female front, while employing Cindy to try and emasculate Obama, suggesting he isn't up to wearing his wife's heels.

What's interesting -- this being the shot the NYT editors chose to illustrate the latest onslaught -- is how Meghan, the most disarming player, is placed front-and-center tempering McCain's six-shooter gesture while the enforcers serve as bookends. Of course, the shoes are clearly of interest, Cindy's as well as Palin's taller, spikier, glossier, sexier and scarier pair.

If yesterday's "prisoners" gaffe (playing out the same day as Cindy's eruption) was indeed spawned by McCain feeling embattled or somehow imprisoned by this campaign, his behavior right now might be understood -- demonstrated by the vicious racist and dehumanizing attacks coming out of his camp (almost exclusively by women, I might add) -- as a turning of the tables, seeking to impose on Obama an experience of humiliation.

Besides McCain hiding behind the skirts, does anyone else hear "torture complex?"

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(image: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times. Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. October 8, 2008)