Joe Conason: Will the press get over its love for McCain? Straight-talking maverick now typical pol

[DeepModem Mom]

Salon: Will the press get over its love for McCain?
The "straight-talking maverick" should be scrutinized like other candidates -- for starters on his soft-money operation called the Reform Institute.
By Joe Conason

Feb. 1, 2008 | Should John McCain emerge victorious from the Super Tuesday primaries next week, as now seems likely, his remarkable revival will impose a stark test on the national press corps. It is a test that the press has failed in years past, and that has only become more critical as the Arizona senator moves closer to his party's presidential nomination.

Given the unabashed affection that so many in the mainstream media display toward McCain, will he be covered fairly and without favoritism? Will he be subjected to the same sarcasm, gossip and investigative zeal so routinely applied to, for example, his potential Democratic rival Hillary Clinton? Will McCain's panders, flip-flops, gaffes and fumbles receive the kind of attention that embarrasses other politicians? Or will he remain exempt from the unsentimental scrutiny that is supposedly the standard of our political journalism?

Hey, almost everybody seems to know the answers already! But for a few minutes let's pretend we don't.

The problem that now confronts the journalists who have lavished so much love on McCain is whether to let America in on a sad secret about the straight-talking maverick, which is that he has transformed himself into a fairly typical politician. After years of tending the McCain mythos, its builders must either continue to maintain it or tear it down.

Like most appealing political myths, his includes more than a little truth....But McCain's performance in the California debate proved again that he has abandoned the principled positions admired by so many independents and even Democrats, though not always by Republicans and conservatives. Where was the straight talker when Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times asked whether he would vote for his own McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill if it came to the Senate floor tomorrow? That guy would not have avoided the question, as McCain did, peevishly retorting that the cursed bill will never come up for a vote. But then that guy left the building many, many months ago....

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/02/01/mccain_problems/

[featherman]

1. God, I hope so... but it's like turning the Titanic

Once the pack press gets an idea in it's head like "Straight Shooter" it enters the mythology and none dare speak against it

Hopefully we'll begin to see some break up here and there but guys like Russert and such will pimp the meme to their graves