John McCain’s comic timing is once again in the spotlight with accusations the Republican presidential candidate cracked a joke about violent rape during his initial run for the US Senate in 1986.
The alleged off-colour gag has lit up the US blogosphere, including the influential Huffington Post.
According to the Post the joke told went like this.
In an appearance before the National League of Cities and Towns in Washington D.C., McCain supposedly asked the crowd if they had heard "the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die?"
The punch line: "When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvellous ape?"
The reporter who originally covered the story in the 1980s has confirmed a joke about apes and rape was made.
"I'm not sure exactly what the wording was of the joke, but something was said. Some joke involving a rape and ape was said. Enough women repeated it to me at the time and the McCain campaign had a non-denial denial," Norma Coile, told the Post.
"It came after his seizure world joke, in which he referred to the [retirement community] Leisure World as seizure world... I just think it reinforced this idea that John McCain is humour challenged. Whatever his qualities, he seems to have a tin ear for how these jokes will go over."
The McCain campaign has denied that he ever delilvered the offensive gag.
McCain’s sense of humour has recently been under attack after he suggested last week that cigarette imports to Iran may be a way of checking the country’s population, but the senator has a history of dropping clangers.
In 1998, he told a joke to Republican party-faithful: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is [Bill Clinton-appointed Attorney General] Janet Reno."
