Given the hell McCain went thru during the war, an occasional racist comment like that is regrettable, but understandable and forgivable.

Nobody's claiming that white people physically tortured Michelle Obama but the point is that each and every one of us has at some point in our lives been under stress, or traumatized in some way, or simply outraged by injustices we perceive, or some painful event we experienced, and has made an ugly, racist statement like that. I've yet to meet a white, black, Hispanic, or Asian person who hasn't at some point in their lives used a racial or ethnic epithet. Nobody's perfect. What matters is what she believes now, and how she acts now. And I really doubt that she would have married the half-white Obama if she really hated "whitey" that much...