I cannot believe he said this

John McCain doesn’t think women deserve equal pay because they are just not that bright. Seriously. I wish I were joking.

NEW ORLEANS - Republican Sen. John McCain, campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns, said Wednesday he opposes a Senate bill that seeks equal pay for women because it would lead to more lawsuits.

[Snip]

McCain stated his opposition to the bill as he campaigned in rural eastern Kentucky, where poverty is worse among women than men. The Arizona senator said he was familiar with the disparity but that there are better ways to help women find better paying jobs.

"They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else," McCain said. "And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them.

Putting aside his rather odd (some would say chauvinistic) assumption that all working women have families to abandon, this is total corporatist bullshit. To begin with, lawsuits are not bad things, in and of themselves. Indeed, filing suit is often the only weapon one can use to redress a grievance. This is especially true in the David versus Goliath scenario of an employee seeking to remedy an employer’s practice. Furthermore, saying that the bill would likely increase the number of suits implies that there is an injustice that is not being addressed through other means. Why is that discrimination not the issue? Put another way, McCain’s statement means the notion that protecting corporations is of greater import than reducing exploitation and inequality. That is just plain wrong.

Finally, this business about education and training – um, WTF? Look, it is simple. Women get paid, relative to men, something like 76 cents on the dollar (if I remember correctly). That disparity is not, as the Senator seems to be implying, because they are only three quarters as smart as their male counterparts and only need some extra training to get up to speed. To suggest so is kind of a remarkable proclamation of female inferiority. The reason why companies pay women less than equally qualified men is because then can. It is a matter of exploitation. One need not be a Marxist to realize that fact.