Republican presidential candidate John McCain set out on a tour of America's "forgotten places" Monday, and along the way he met a few black people, heard a few black spirituals, and tossed around his wife's Black Amex to score a few museum-quality quilts from the locals with which to warm his snow-white balls on the campaign bus (okay, he paid with a check, but still). The cost of those quilts: an estimated $7,500 for a set of three.

The obvious questions: Does throwing around this kind of cash ingratiate McCain with the locals, or does it make him seem like just another rich white bastard? And was it an issue for McCain that these were probably not gay quilts?

The town, Gee's Bend, is well known, and McCain embraced it: "I have heard of this wonderful place and I know that it has a place in history. I know Dr. [Martin Luther] King was here before the march in Selma, so they stopped running the Ferry. Now the ferry is running and I intend to ride the ferry back."

It went unsaid by the candidate, but the message was implicit: "With my purchase of these quilts I hope you will forget that I have been largely indifferent to your cause and understand that when I voted against a national Martin Luther King holiday way back whenever, I didn't really think I'd ever need to ask you for your vote for the presidency. Not that I didn't think I'd be running—it's just that I thought your vote still wouldn't mean very much."

McCain's Tour of the Poor doesn't end there. He's now heading to the similarly impoverished and disenfranchised locales of Appalachia and New Orleans, where he plans to have Cindi buy him, respectively, the original banjo from Deliverance and an actual fire truck from the Katrina disaster effort.