Filed under: things I want to believe

I have been pretty frustrated by the free pass McCain has been getting from the media -- there just doesn't seem to be any dumb-ass thing he can say which the arbiters of our public discourse find news-worthy in the way they do any minor stumble or gaffe from the Obama camp. Seriously, how many major gaffes has McMaverick had this week?  I can think of half a dozen, each of which would have been lovingly reviewed by Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and David Broder, over and over, had they come from Obama.

My assumption is that the media is entirely in the tank for McCain.  He's courted them for years, and they respond by fluffing him shamelessly, and excusing any misstatement, no matter how outrageous, as a slip of the tongue, or as part of his quirky charm.

But I was listening to Air America yesterday, and their political correspondent had an interesting theory.  His take was that there is a widespread assumption in the political media that McCain is a "dead man walking," and they do like him, so they don't want to pile on and add insult to injury.  Now of course that's a terrible and self-defeating assumption, and the converse is that: if McCain staged a comeback and made this race clearly competitive, or took a commanding lead, I don't know that his treatment by the media would change.  In fact it might worsen -- as the presumptive president-in-waiting, they would probably fawn on him all the more.

Man, one of the things I have about being a democrat is having to win against an aggressive and ruthless opponent (the GOP) while the refs have been co-opted and cowed into actively working for the other team.