GOP FLACK BROOKS ADDS A NEW WRINKLE TO THE "McCAIN AS VICTIM" MEME

Have you ever wondered why they pay David Brooks the big bucks?

I'll explain.

You see, anyone can argue that John McCain is so pure and virtuous that he had to be forced into running a campaign consisting almost exclusively of vicious negative attacks ...

... and anyone can argue that longtime media darling McCain is actually the victim of liberal media bias ...

... but it takes a special talent -- a David Brooks -- to argue that pure, virtuous McCain was forced to run a negative campaign because of liberal media bias. That's just brilliant. That's advancing two memes at once!

.... McCain started his general-election campaign in poverty-stricken areas of the South and Midwest. He went through towns where most Republicans fear to tread and said things most wouldn't say. It didn't work. The poverty tour got very little coverage on the network news. McCain and his advisers realized the only way they could get TV attention was by talking about the subject that interested reporters most: Barack Obama....

McCain and his advisers ... have been compelled, at least in their telling, to abandon the campaign they had hoped to run. Now they are running a much more conventional race, the kind McCain himself used to ridicule.

The man who lampooned the Message of the Week is now relentlessly on message (as observers of his fine performance at Saddleback Church can attest). The man who hopes to inspire a new generation of Americans now attacks Obama daily. It is the only way he can get the networks to pay attention....

So not only is he completely innocent of the charge that he has anything whatsoever to do with the tone of his own campaign, it's the press that's actually guilty!

And what's more, the only reason the press gives John McCain a megaphone to attack Obama on a daily basis is that journalists love Obama too much not to focus on him! Therefore covering McCain's attacks is actually pro-Obama bias!

Hacktastic, David. Utterly hacktastic.