McCain Feels Media Bite

It seems everyone in the mainstream press and political blogosphere is talking about Sen. John McCain, and it's not the kind of talk that makes a candidate clap for joy.

Nope, it's sex-scandal time. I really should keep a tally ... which mainstream media outlet broke/led/embellished the John Edwards story? Would it be the same that is now accusing McCain of an affair? Nope ... the Edwards story was a product of the National Enquirer. The McCain one comes from the NY Times.

At Townhall, Mary Katharine Ham uses one of my lines: "If I had turned this load of crap into a journalism professor at the University of Georgia, I would have failed the assignment." (Yeah, I went to UGA Journalism school, too.)

Josh Marshall takes a more balanced approach, one that reflects my curiosity and fatalistic belief in the power of the corporate attorney:

This is an odd story for a couple reasons. We know that the McCain Camp went to the mattresses to get this story spiked back in December. And some heavy legal muscle was apparently brought to bear. When a story has to go through that much lawyering it often comes out pretty stilted and with some obvious lacunae. And this one definitely qualifies...

I find it very difficult to believe that the Times would have put their chin so far out on this story if they didn't know a lot more than they felt they could put in the article, at least on the first go. But in a decade of doing this, I've learned not to give any benefits of the doubt, even to the most esteemed institutions.

More from the Washington Post, Washington Monthly, FOX Embeds and The New Republic.

Published at 03.09 Pacific