The latter complaint will be regarded as "chickens coming home to roost" by a lot of movement conservatives, who have been predicting with glee for more than a year that as soon as McCain wins the nomination, his buddies in the press will turn on him.

May it work just as well for him as her...

This is hardly to be expected after February and March saw the Clinton and McCain camps practically coordinating their messages with each other. However, these are standard tropes. Play into the media's guilt, play up experience.

Next thing you know McCain is going to start wearing pants suits, tear up in a diner, claim a majority of the popular vote. . .

JC, McCain already wears a pantsuit. When a man wears it, it's called a "suit." Which is why it's wrong to ridicule Hillary and other women politicians for wearing it.

McCain's ties, however, have been getting louder over the last two years. He's still usually wearing stripes, but they're loud, bold stripes by the standards of post-Reagan presidential fashion. If there were gender justice, Old Man Mac would get as much ridicule for his Fordian loud-stripe ties as Hillary got for her curtain-remnant jackets.

Rhubarbs-

I think if McCain were to wear a pants suit a la Hillary, one would be able to notice the difference between his suit and hers.

As for ridiculing HRC, there was, and is, a great deal to loathe in the woman, other than her clothes (ie, her Iraq war vote, her Tuzla fabrication, her claim that she brought peace to Northern Ireland, her distortions regarding the popular vote, her sleaziness regarding the illegal primaries in Florida and Michigan, and on and on and on). But now that she's out of the race--now that she's acknowledged that she's out of the race--it all seems less pressing somehow, almost irrelevant, almost boring.

Anyone have a link to an image file with Michael from The Office wearing a woman's suit to work?  This thread brings the image to mind, and I can't help laughing.

Once McCain gets two weeks of nonstop "cunt"-gate coverage, a week's break from it, and then another two weeks of the same, *then* I'll listen to some complaints. Until then, the guy needs to grow a pair. He hasn't seen anything yet.

I don't think the media has really gone after McCain as much as they did Hilary or Obama.  Most of the MSM (particularly: Wolf Blitzer, Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson, David Gregory, etc) still have not actively gone after McCain for the times when he has completely flip-flopped on any given issue.  

In particular on David Gregory's MSNBC show "Race To The White House" any time some "liberal" media panelist (usually Rachel Maddow) brings up the fact that McCain has indeed changed his positions on some issues, and yes his record for the past 7 years has followed the Bush Adminstration closely, Gregory always finds a way to bring up McCain's "maverick" status, which may have been true back in 2000/2004, but is certainly not so true in recent years.

Maybe they're going easy on him because, like Hillary (according to TNR CW), people don't want McCain to win, but they don't want him to lose, either.

A little off topic, but while we're talking about McCain and his prospects - the GAO allowed Boeing's protest on the Air Force tanker contract to the EADS/Northrup team.    McCain opposed giving the contract to Boeing mainly because their previous deal to "lease" tankers was so crooked, a former Air Force official and Boeing exec went to jail  .  His support for the EADS/Northrup team was a political liability.  After all, it involved the FRENCH, and good Murricans hate the French.  The GAO decision potentially removes a campaign issue.  

If you think the McCain campaign is bellyaching about Obama's favorable press coverage now, wait

sgla:

Anyone have a link to an image file with Michael from The Office wearing a woman's suit to work?

Oof, I want that link!

Yeah, "pantsuit" sounds cheesy, and I like to just say "suit" if it's what I have to wear to work, and not have to go into whether or not it's got skirt or pants at the bottom. But I guess because H absolutely never wore a skirt, it became a thing or something.

It is clear that Obama is unfairly favored. Nobody tells imbecile stories about his suits or Michelle's dresses, except to put out some puff pieces about how she resembles Jackie O. - while clothes-based character evaluation is the standard treatement the others get.

The press has the intelligence, judgment, maturity and instincts of the kind of school students who regularly flunk math and science - but are popular, know everything about movie stars and pop culture and never read a book or solve an equation. Those judge by the clothes too. These are the opinion makers. That's valid for the TNR staff too.

Dubya, as is often the case, McCain did what he thought was right on the Boeing deal.  When will BHO ever do something that his caucus thinks is off the reservation, but that he truly believes?

What does he truly believe, except that he should be President?

"What does he truly believe"

I'm calling bullshit! I've never heard this question asked of a presidential candidate before. I've never heard this question addressed by a presidential candidate before except indirectly (aside from Bush's Christian musings). Best of all, why isn't anyone worried about asking McCain this question?

"Nobody tells imbecile stories about his suits or Michelle's dresses"

Sleepy, it seems to me that the real problem HERE is that Obama and Michelle are more stylishly dressed than the competition. I cannot, however, disagree with your assessment of "the press", in general, but I do disagree with your assessment of TNR.

www.outsidethebeltway.com/.../obama_in_muslim_garb  www.sfgate.com/.../article.cgi  ww2.mg.co.za/.../2008-06-18-the-obama-look

As for the actual topic of the post, I don't see why there should be a correlation between having a "real record of accomplishment" and preferential treatment by the Press Corps. Its sounds, to me, like a bunch of namby-pamby-mama's-boys have been getting off easy while the nation's spotlights were focused on the democratic primary, but now that its the general election the glare is quickly becoming too much; now that reporters are interested in flushing out the details of McCain-centered stories all the alarms are going off: preferential treatment, not fair, blah blah blah.