The Pundits Are Obviously Bored

You know how McCain is boinking some lobbyist in exchange for legislative favors? Or how Obama stole campaign lines from Deval Patrick? If so, that's because you listen to the pundits too much. Because as far as we know, neither of these things actually happened.

McCain first. The flap is over the allegations allegedly raised by this New York Times article. The pundits are all abuzz about McCain's possible inappropriate relationship with a female lobbyist thirty years his junior. The left is making accusations, the right is accusing back. Of course, it seems no one bothered to ACTUALLY READ THE DAMN ARTICLE, which doesn't make a single accusation or allegation regarding the relationship between McCain and the lobbyist. The point of the article is that McCain's self-assuredness on ethical issues often makes him oblivious to the fact that it sometimes looks like he has conflicts of interest. The article uses his dealings with Ms. Iseman - which the article states may well be perfectly legit - as an instance of McCain not realizing how things look, and in this case having to be "rescued" by his staffers.

McCain has hurt himself, though, by attacking the Times for printing the article. That's stupid. The Times did a really good job with this article - it avoids being accusatory about any of McCain's relationships and simply explains one of McCain's weaknesses. His target of ire should be at those who read the Times article incorrectly and assume that he's screwing around.

Not that I care whether or not McCain is cheating on his wife. If he's trading sexual favors for legislative ones, that's a different story, but there's no evidence that he has, so let's all just shut up about it.

We can all shut up, as well, about Obama's supposed mooching of lines from Massachussets governor Deval Patrick. I don't know the specifics of this one all that well, but... well, it's kind of like a band covering a song on stage. You know the song was written by someone else, but it still has a different sound, a different feel to it when the new band plays it (unless it's 311 covering "Lovesong," but that's another story). And if the original band has no problem with it, who cares? It's entertainment. That's what this boils down to - politicians are in part entertainers, and he's "covering" a few lines from a speech made by one of his supporters - with his supporter's blessing, I might add. Why does anyone care?

Stupid pundits.