Am I really writing about this? Gee, just what you need: another stupid right-wing blog talking about the same thing all the other stupid right wing blogs are discussing. How enlightening for your world. No, I could be writing about God's goodness, Putin's latest moves, or some interesting recent scientific discovery, but no, I'm sitting here writing about lipstick and pigs.

(Grumble.)

Well, why?

Because I sense we're at a watershed moment, upon which I suspect much future history will be built, and I've learned from past history that if I don't document precisely what was happening at such moments, I will regret it later. But don't run away yet: As I can tell, there are almost no web sites out there bringing together the whole picture below.

The Christian Science Monitor's Turn

This morning, the normally-fairminded Christian Science Monitor ran a cartoon showing Karl Rove holding a small bucket of mud, pointing at John McCain (who wields a gargantuan bucket of mud, and has his hands full of it) and cautioning him: "John - No! Too much!" -- the obvious implication that McCain has been a master of smear tactics, exceeding (in the cartoonist's outlook) even Karl Rove.

The accompanying article contains a quote from Rove saying that something in one of McCain's ads is "beyond the 100 percent truth test" -- but omits the context of Rove's quote (of course): yet just seconds earlier, Rove had said that McCain had gone "similarly too far" compared to some of Obama's allegations. Had the Monitor wanted to depict Rove's statement fairly, the cartoonist would have drawn a mutual Obama/McCain mudfight, both with dirty hands and buckets.

If you care about context:

ROVE: ... Both campaigns are making a mistake, and that is they are taking whatever their attacks are and going one step too far. We saw this this week, for example, in the Obama ad where he makes the point, a legitimate point, that John McCain came to the United States Congress in 1982 and that he has been a longtime Washington insider. But they then say he doesn't even know how to use a — you know, doesn't send e-mail. Well, this is because his war injuries keep him from being able to use a keyboard....

Well, McCain has gone in some of his ads — similarly gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100-percent-truth test. They don't need to attack each other in this way....

But both campaigns ought to be careful about it. They ought to — there ought to be an adult who says, "Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don't we make our point and won't we get broader acceptance and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us if we don't include that one little last tweak in the ad?"

If you read the CS Monitor article, you'll also notice that it implies Rove ended by saying McCain has gone too far, implying that came after the final quote above. Between that and the deceptive cartoon (which is all most readers will see), I 'm disappointed to see how their standards have slipped. But CNN is in a similar place, implying that Rove's criticism was directed mainly toward McCain and only parenthetically, glancingly towards Obama, too.

Meanwhile, Time magazine, ever neutral, depicts McCain as "Outraged and Outrageous", and, like CNN, presents Obama as an utterly innocent bystander taken by surprise by unprovoked sneak attacks by McCain (bold added):

The charges were incendiary enough to shift the discussion, forcing Obama off message, and into a defensive posture. By week's end, he had declared his intention to run a more aggressive campaign.

I'm not here to excuse or justify either side, but just for context, let's recall that Obama's campaign and supporters have so far been the source of a rather impressively long list of factually false allegations against VP candidate Palin. And far from being a laundry list of detailed policies (detailed policies? whatever are those?) Obama's "message" has been mainly "change", and that his opponents are alternatively too old, or too inexperienced (not that McCain hasn't embraced at least one of those themes also).

In light of that, to depict the Obama campaign as just now starting to attack McCain and Palin, and only from a defensive posture -- after already having dropped a "small army of lawyers" into Wasilla to dig up muck, and having originated some of the sleaziest allegations against the children of political opponents that I can personally recall, begs credulity. I could be content with an "a pox on both their houses" stance, but to depict team Obama's as innocent guiltless naifs, well, please -- let's be real here.

Why is this important?

According to polls like Rasmussen, McCain has pulled ahead of Obama (49% to 47%). According to other sources, team Obama has been thrown off balance by Palin's entry. The immediate response, as those who watch TV and check their facts will notice, was a rather massive smear campaign by Obama's media allies -- I've heard (legitimate, it would seem) complaints that you'd see an unsubstantiated rumor on DailyKos one evening or morning, and the next news cycle you'd see it on national TV. (Quite frankly, I've never witnessed anything like this in my adult life.)

But it seems that team Obama is signaling that they're going to stoop lower, so their allies in the media are, on cue, framing the narrative to justify the muck we're about to see unleashed: "Obama was talking about the substance of his policies [what policies? "change"?] when he was viciously attacked. He's not good at this sort of thing [please don't peer into his Illinois political background] and so he was forced [forced, I tell you!] to adopt the same sort of smear tactics which had been leveled against him."

So we see a raft of news reports depicting McCain as sleazy, and Obama as principled, and caught off guard by McCains "sleazy" smears. This will become the future historical depiction of this election, and we're standing, right now, at the watershed moment where the media first starts to craft that narrative.

What "smears", specifically?

Frankly, I haven't HEARD any smears from the McCain campaign. (Recall that a "smear" is a false, defaming allegation, not simply a charge that your opponent has insufficient experience, or bad policies.) I'd agree with Rove that there may be a few times McCain has (unnecessarily) taken something out of context (I'm inclined to believe their use of Katie Couric's quote is such an example, albeit a mild one, given that Obama would indeed have been Hillary's opposition at that time) but I'm unaware of any specific "smears".

Turning to the Time magazine article for enlightenment, here are the examples it offers of John McCain's allegedly "outrageous" attacks on Obama:

Two weeks ago, the McCain campaign crowed about the alleged mistreatment that the press and the Obama campaign were heaping on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. (At roughly the same time as the campaign sent out email blasts featuring enthusiastic media blurbs of Palin's convention speech.) After the convention, the indignation only intensified; in the course of 24 hours, McCain accused Barack Obama of supporting "sex education" for kindergarten students and referring to Palin as a pig wearing lipstick.

So McCain's "outrageous" charges are... what? Let's take them one by one:

1. McCain alleged that the media attacked Sarah Palin.

Well, what I can say? The point would seem indisputable. We were told that Sarah Palin lied about what child she gave birth to? We saw media outlets announcing she'd had an affair -- with no supporting documentation. We saw false allegations that she was an antisemite, that she'd banned books, that she was in favor of teaching creationism in science classes. We saw The Atlantic demanding she make public medical reports on her (I kid you not) amniotic fluids, and we saw other publications alleging all manner of malfeasance against her children. (Her children!)

But I guess good taste and decorum won't allow McCain to even say this is happening, and ask for it to stop.

So that's McCain's first alleged wrongdoing?

2. Supporting sex education for kindergarteners?

Why is wrong to point that out? Obama actually does support sex education for kindergarteners. As even ABC News admitted back in 2007, while Hillary was still his opponent:

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is "age-appropriate," is "the right thing to do."

Again, why is it unethical for John McCain to actually point out that Obama advocates this? It is "outrageous" to, completely truthfully, point out your opponent has some unpopular stances? Or is it only okay for Obama to do this?

3. Of lipstick and pigs

(I so do not want to write about this. But we don't get to pick watershed issues. If WWI could be started by the assassination of an archduke, then I suppose the worst part of this political season could be touched off by porcine comments.)

We know Sarah Palin described herself at the RNC as being like a pitbull with lipstick. Shortly after, the St. Louis Post Dispatch ran this cartoon, equating a giant lipstick-wearing Palin-sow with Federal earmarks:

Meanwhile, at approximately the same time, the Washington Post ran this political cartoon:

Note the text, and compare it with the context of Obama's remarks:

John McCain says he’s about change too. Exce- and and so I guess his whole angle is - watch out, George Bush - except for economic policy, healthcare policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl-Rove-style politics, we’re really gonna shake things up in Washington.

That’s not change.

That’s that’s just callin’ sumpin’ the same thing somethin’ different.

But you know, you can’t, you know, you you can put, ah, lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old dead fish in a newspaper called change, but eight years later, it’s still going to smell.

Why is this so hard for everyone? Look at the context: Obama was clearly taking his political talking points from cartoons. (What a sad day in US politics.) His first quote is almost exactly the same as Tom Toles' cartoon, and the the last paragraph is clearly a personalization of his opponent as an animal. His campaign has been depicting McCain as old, speaking often about the possibility that he's going to die soon (another new high) and of course "eight more years" has nothing to do with time in office right?

I have no idea what Obama was thinking (other than that he was clearly thinking of political cartoons he'd seen) but I can easily understand how one could see his pair of references to "lipstick" and "dead fish", especially with the "eight years" tacked on, as being a reference to his political opponents.

At least, given the clear implication of his statement, it should have warranted an apology to both McCain and Palin. But, again, the crime seems to be that McCain pointed it out. And of course the media have been very helpful by usually truncating Obama's adjacent words from both sides of the quote, leaving the reader with nothing other than the "lipstick/pig" quote, completely severed from its context.

(Or worse, they've said that the context was "Bush's policies", omitting the "old dead fish" and the closing line about "eight more years" -- and eliding the most obvious source of the preceding quote.)

And even if one disagrees with McCain's interpretation (Dennis Prager, for example, has defended Obama on this one, though he apparently hadn't heard the "dead fish" ending) one could at least see how his might have sounded potentially offensive, and warranting at least a retraction or apology.

Wrapping things up (so to speak)

So that's the McCain "sleaze" which will justify a mudslide of new attacks, and bring US politics to a new contemporary low? These are the worst things that McCain is being accused of? Help me out here, but how is that not just a set of defensive responses to things said in the press or even by his opponent? Yet Time portrays it the other way, and, no doubt, future press accounts will too.

The operative narrative seems to be (pardon me from lifting one of Ann Coulter's actual funny lines): "It all started when he hit me back!" Only it's not much of a "hit back", unless pointing out what's going on is now reprehensible.