So McCain gets to bask in the glow of his own authenticity—and, as a bonus, his missteps also find themselves bathed in that haze. Take, again, his jokes. In framing his more off-color gags not as gaffes, but as evidence of his genuineness—“he tells off-color jokes, how authentic”—the media essentially insulated him from further discussion of those jokes’ content. (“That’s just McCain being McCain.” “That’s just how he is.” Et cetera.) By dismissing his missteps in that way, the media didn’t just ignore the jokes’ broader implications; they legitimized them as evidence of the senator’s authenticity.

Lighten up—they’re only jokes, you may say. Fair enough, that they are—and, hey, some of them are funny. And yet. The press’s treatment of the gags, especially given that that treatment fits into a larger framework about McCain, has slippery-slope potential. There have been moments, after all, when McCain hasn’t been such a maverick, when he hasn’t been so “authentic”—when he, like Obama, has shifted or moved to the middle or what you will for the sake of political expediency. There will be more. That’s politics.

But just as Obama has been cushioned by the narrative his own campaign has been pushing—of his transcendence, of his being somehow above traditional rules precisely because he claims to be rewriting those rules—McCain has been insulated by his own authenticity. Both candidates have been given, to some extent, free rides. But the press is now questioning Obama’s pass—and it should be doing the same for McCain. “He’s just being himself” should no longer be an acceptable explanation for his statements or actions. Voters may be interested in McCain being McCain, but they’re much more interested in the press being the press.

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