Hey! Wait a minute, oh say that again!

Following up on Andrew Sullivan's fanciful praise of John McCain earlier today, Sullivan has now taken note of John McCain's ridiculous association of Barack Obama with Hamas.

When it comes to McCain, I don't think Sullivan, or much of our media, gets it. There is no "Good McCain, Bad McCain." It's just John McCain. That's who he is. He feeds what he believes will be eaten up. He is portrayed as a man of principle. But he's not. He's a man who knows how to play the media. Sullivan got punk'd by McCain, and when the evidence was presented, he just gave a soft rebuttal (because, as we know, that's just not the real McCain, right?). McCain makes a half-hearted (and likely disingenuous) statement to the purveyors of the North Carolina attack ad, and gets praised profusely for his integrity. He equates Obama with Hamas and Sullivan basically just notes the comment for the record. Because it doesn't fit the narrative of John McCain as an honest, straight-talking man of principle.

If either statement came from Hillary Clinton, Sullivan would be all over her. But, like Chris Matthews and the bulk of the broadcast media, he doesn't share the cynicism about McCain's condemnation of the North Carolina ad because, well, nobody wants to believe that McCain is like that. He's a maverick, a war hero, who tells it like it is.

But the evidence that McCain is indeed the type of person who plays dirty politics, twists facts and will do anything to win is all over the place. In what sense has John McCain, in his words, "done everything that [he] can to repudiate and to see that this kind of campaigning does not continue"? By making a statement and sending an email regarding the North Carolina race-baiting ad, but keeping the story alive so the ad keeps getting play in heavy rotation on the cable news channels? McCain is vying to be the leader of the Republican Party and, more importantly, the nation. So either he's too weak to stop his surrogates, or he doesn't want to stop them.

As always, McCain is getting the best of both worlds -- Obama gets smeared, but McCain gets to look like the good guy who stood up to those mean folks who are saying all those nasty things In the meantime, McCain uses the cover of his stand-up guy comment to launch an attack of his own, which will, in typical fashion, be dismissed as meaningless, just campaign stuff.

Cause we all know that McCain is a good man, right.

Classic John McCain, all of it.