New book: McCain's free ride in the media

A new book, Free Ride: John McCain and the Media, is due out on March 25. This one just shot up on my '08 reading list; the authors, David Brock (of Media Matters fame) and Paul Waldman discuss the free ride that McCain seems to be getting thus far from the press. I certainly agree with the book's premise; this trend doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon.

As Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone sagely said recently on Bill Maher's show, (I'm paraphrasing), you can label or call yourself just about anything, and the press will go along; run any shit up the flagpole, and the press will stand and salute it. And he's right. How did McCain get the reputation of being a Straight Talker? Because he painted it on the side of his bus. All of his lies and inconsistencies go unreported at worst, or vastly under reported at best. You cannot hear a story about McCain these days without hearing "straight talker" and/or "maverick."

Joe Connelly of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently wrote a pretty good column about McCain's free ride . In reads, in part:

McCain is allowed to dominate any and every issue on which he chooses to cross the aisle in Congress. He is omnipresent on Sunday talk shows.

Between 1997 and 2006, McCain had 135 appearances as a guest on Meet the Press, This Week and Face the Nation, far more than runner-up Joe Biden, with 91. McCain was usually able to hold forth alone rather than sharing the stage.

The favorable press coverage has airbrushed McCain's temper and remarks that would get any other politician in trouble.

It was, after all, McCain who referred to Leisure World as "Seizure World." He once joked: "The nice thing about getting Alzheimer's is you get to hide your own Easter eggs."

Connelly couldn't be more correct. Whenever you hear McCain call someone "my friend," you know he's pissed. And who could forget his stupid joke about "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," in a pathetic parody of a Beach Boys song? I can take a joke as good as the next person, but what kind of message does it send the rest of the world when a leading politician for president in this country makes such flippant, churlish jokes about bombing Iran, an idea which many war mongers in this country openly support?

Anyway, the premise of the book sounds like a good one, and a largely unexplored one at that. You can read more about the book or pre-order a copy from Amazon Here.

h/t Crooks & Liars