McCain Camp Calls Fey’s Palin Impersonation ‘Sexist,’ Cindy McCain Slams ‘View’

In a war of words reminiscent of Vice President Dan Quayle taking on television character Murphy Brown in the 1992 presidential election, John McCain’s camp is slamming Tina Fey’s impersonation of Governor Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live,” while Cindy McCain is calling out the ladies of “The View.”

“SNL” had its highest rated season premiere since 2002, but some members of the McCain campaign were not laughing with the millions of viewers tuning in to see “30 Rock” star and “SNL” alum Tina Fey portray Sarah Palin alongside Amy Poehler, who did her Sen. Hillary Clinton impression.

“The portrait was very dismissive of the substance of Sarah Palin, and so in that sense, they were defining Hillary Clinton as very substantive, and Sarah Palin as totally superficial,” McCain advisor Carly Fiorina told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Monday. “I think that continues the line of argument that is disrespectful in the extreme, and yes I would say sexist.”

The Fey/Poehler sketch satirized such topics as Palin’s religious beliefs and foreign policy.

“Just because Sarah Palin has different views than Hillary Clinton does not mean that she lacks substance. She has a lot of substance,” Fiorina said.

Palin, on the other hand, found the sketch amusing, according to her spokesperson. The governor and the press corps watched the sketch in the back of her plane, laughing at Tina and Amy’s satirical take on the two politicians.

“She thought it was quite funny, particularly because she once dressed up as Tina Fey for Halloween,” Palin spokesperson Tracey Schmitt told CBS.

And the lashings from the McCain camp didn’t just stop with Tina Fey — Cindy McCain also called out the ladies of “The View” after their appearance on the daytime talk show last week.

“In spite of what you see in the newspapers, and on shows like ‘The View’ — I don’t know if any of you saw ‘The View’ yesterday, they picked our bones clean — in spite of what you see, that’s not what the American people are saying and what they are believing,” Cindy McCain said at the 119th annual Oakland County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, Saturday night in Michigan, according to ABC News’ Arnab Datta.

Cindy McCain might have left “The View” feeling attacked, but the daytime gabbers have a fan in former co-host Rosie O’Donnell, who thought Barbara Walter’s handling of the McCains was superb.

“I thought she rocked,” Rosie wrote of Barbara on her Web site.