The AP proves that it’s easy to go lower than the execrable story in the NYT on John McCain. The AP story starts with the clear implication that McCain is guilty of impropriety, something that the weaselly NYT story never fully implies, taking refuge in the hints of anonymous sources and phrases like “waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers”. By contrast, the nasty AP story is upfront and heavy handed in its guilt-by-association theme:

Cindy McCain, like others, stands by man

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady who is battling Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, memorably insisted to CBS’s “60 Minutes” during the 1992 campaign, “I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.” She sat beside husband Bill…Cindy McCain struck a balance between strident and shocked as she calmly helped her husband confront the allegations. She was no Hillary Clinton, but neither was she silent, like the wives of New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey and Idaho Sen. Larry Craig. The first announced he was gay, the second said he was not.

Meanwhile, McCain issued a 1500 word statement on the NYT story — as if anyone cares about the facts at this point. And finally, the NYT goes the AP one better, and now accuses McCain of going to war with the Times, rather than responding to the Times’ attack:

one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers leveled harsh criticism at The New York Times in what appeared to be a deliberate campaign strategy to wage a war with the newspaper.

How very odd the New York Times has become.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 5:59 pm and is filed under business, Democrats, General, MSM, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.