“[McCain told Ellen] that even though she‘s gay, she should be allowed to sign her name like an adult … Next thing, he‘ll say gay people should be allowed to drive and keep pets.”
– Rachel Maddow
John McCain humiliated himself on Ellen DeGeneris’ show this week when he said he opposes gay marriage but is in favor of permitting gay people to “enter into legal agreements.”

ELLEN DEGENERES, “ELLEN”: I‘m, obviously, excited and to me this is only fair and only natural and what are your thoughts?

MCCAIN: Well, my thoughts are that I think that people should be able to enter into legal agreements. I just believe in the unique status of marriage between man and woman.

On MSNBC’s Countdown last night, openly gay Air America host Rachel Maddow hilarilously ridiculed McCain’s paternalism:

KEITH OLBERMANN: We‘ll get to the substance of this. But the whole hip to be square posture did not work for the senator.

MADDOW: Yes, his supposed political asset that he‘s a straight-talking guy that will say anything to anyone, anywhere, no matter the political costs, well, today what it meant is that he told Ellen DeGeneres he was so bold to say that even though she‘s gay, she should be allowed to sign her name like an adult. I think people should be allowed to enter legal agreements. Next thing, he‘ll say gay people should be allowed to drive and keep pets.

Ultimately, he‘s asserting the radical, bold political bold political straight talking notion that gay people should be allowed to hire lawyers to compensate for the fact that they are discriminated against in the law. Awesome.

OLBERMANN: Yes. The position in this country, it‘s simply, I think, bluntly stated, that people are coming around to the idea that gay marriage is a civil rights issue. Get over it. Plus the main rationale against it, the sanctity of the male/female marriage, 50 percent of which still ends in divorce. What exactly is the sanctity of the male/female marriage? Why shouldn‘t everybody get a chance to screw up their lives forever?

MADDOW: What‘s the relationship of a sanctity of a heterosexual marriage to the sanctity or not of a gay marriage? I live in Massachusetts. What we experience with gay marriage there is that all of the anti-gay marriage stuff sort of dissolved and sort of had the air knocked out of it after gay people were allowed to get married. Nothing happened to straight people. Straight people‘s lives didn‘t change. The sky didn‘t fall.

OLBERMANN: No meteors.

MADDOW: No meteors. Divorce didn‘t go up or down. Kids were still kids. Adults were still adults. Pets were still pets. It was all fine. And it took the wind out of the argument against it.

OLBERMANN: Big picture and we are crunched for time, but McCain has basically been playing a one-on-one basketball game by himself in this campaign. No opponent yet. He‘s complaining about the refs. He‘s tried to ban some of the reporters covering the game. He‘s fired one of the lead cheerleaders, Pastor Hagee, and maybe one of the other ones is going to have to go. And he‘s losing. How do you do that?

MADDOW: He‘s losing because he‘s running an incredibly bad campaign because he can, because he doesn‘t have an opponent. He can afford to. He‘s testing to see how far he can push the press back in case they ever decide to stop giving him a free ride. He‘s testing them.

OLBERMANN: Led by Ellen DeGeneres, now aren‘t we indicating we will not give him a free ride?

MADDOW: There‘s Tyra, too.

OLBERMANN: I know. Tyra, Ellen DeGeneres, me, we‘re the push-back points.

MADDOW: Yes. You‘re the leader.

OLBERMANN: And he‘s testing. So far he‘s F, F, F, F. He‘s going to continue this pattern?

MADDOW: He‘s been getting a free ride for so long. He‘s so unused to getting hard questions on anything. He gets one or two. They are pushing back to see how far they can go.