"How do we beat the bitch?"

Someone asks John McCain. You can see that he does some comic gesturing and asks for a "translation," but then he says it's an "excellent question." Presumably, he means the translated question is good, and he's making a show of ignoring the word "bitch." But I don't think "bitch" is a word that can be used in political discourse around a presidential candidate. Imagine if the questioner had asked — referring to Obama — "how do we beat the [n-word]?" He would have immediately voiced his rejection of that word. Laughing and pretending to wipe away sweat and so forth would never have been good enough and he would have known it.

ADDED: For comparison, look at how McCain reacted, just last month, when a man asked a question that conveyed racial hostility:

"Do the people in Washington - the politicians and the lobbyists and the rich people writing the checks - do they understand the amount of anger the average European Christian, native-born American feels when they see their country turning into a multicultural chaos Tower of Babel?"

McCain brought that man up short:

"I believe the greatest strength of America is the lady who holds her lamp behind the golden door that says send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses... And I am grateful to live in a nation that has been enriched by people coming to our nation from around the world.

"I will do everything in my power to secure the borders, but I love this nation and I love the people who have come from around the world," he said to loud applause.

Why did we not see that kind of passion and indignation in response to the sexist epithet?