My friend Will emailed this today. I think it’s brilliant.

I’m unveiling my new piece called “Talk to the Hand”. It’s a collection of pictures of McCain shielding himself from tough questions with his abnormally large, gnarled, liver-spotted hands.

Let me know what you think.

I’m hoping to collect enough of these to make a photomosaic of a middle finger flipping off America.

If you haven’t already seen this, check out this video of John McCain squirming as a reporter asks him if he thinks it’s fair that Viagra is often covered by insurance while female contraception is not.

This is disturbing on a number of levels. One, because it’s a relatively straightforward question that seems to utterly paralyze the man. Two, because it’s not that he doesn’t have an answer, it’s that he doesn’t know the right answer that won’t get him in trouble with his constituents and therefore hems and haws and generally looks foolish. Three, considering the obvious distress this causes him, imagine if he was being confronted with a tricky question that had to do with national or global security.

Look, this should not be that hard. A Republican candidate should be free to speak his mind without having to fear a mass exodus of votes based on this one comment. I mean seriously, if you’re hardcore NRA, pro-life, and pro-war (forget that contradiction for the time being), are you really going to withhold your vote over this particular issue? Yes, the underlying question tests McCain’s resolve regarding pro-life and abstinence-only sex ed program, but c’mon. Two out of three ain’t bad, right?

Backing the status quo must be an untenable position. If it wasn’t, McCain would have made a case for why the current situation exists. I’m sure there’s an answer that the religious right would want to hear as well as one pharmaceutical companies would want to hear. The question is how many other voters such an answer would potentially alienate.

If this relatively innocuous question riles him, can you imagine what the debates are going to be like?

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