Rachel Maddow appeared on"Countdown" last night to talk about John McCain's joke(?) about entering his wife in a topless beauty contest, and hit on an important point: in order to compete with Barack Obama's rock star appeal, the McCain camp has decided to find places where large people gather for other reasons and bask in the unwarranted limelight.

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OLBERMANN: Also, maybe a somewhat serious point contained in all this malarkey; on stage at Sturgis, he referred to the—preferring the roar of the 50,000 Harleys to 200,000 Germans cheering in Berlin. But in doing that, did he not underscore the fact that those 200,000 Germans in Berlin actually showed up to hear Barack Obama speak, but the 50,000 bikers on the roar of their Harleys, they had shown up at Sturgis not to see John McCain, but to see Kid Rock, Kelly Pickler and a bunch of female wrestlers and other women not wearing tops?

MADDOW: This is a critical and basic difference between the John McCain campaign for president and the Barack Obama campaign. Barack Obama creates large crowds when he gives speeches. John McCain‘s campaign has just figured out to find out where there‘s going to be a large crowd for another reason and to hope to slip their candidate in between other acts.

I guess you can't really blame McCain. When your opponent draws tens of thousands of people who genuinely want to hear him speak, and you have trouble filling the dining room of a Sausage restaurant, you have to find ways to compensate. It's just ironic that they attack Obama's celebrity appeal yet try to emulate it any way they can.