But what Obama himself says matters little at this point. Audiences—also known as voters—have gotten too accustomed to campaigns’ back-and-forth, to all the vitriolic he-said-she-saids, to focus their attention on the details of the accusations the campaigns hurl at each other. What they recognize, rather, is the press’s framing of those accusations, the media’s treatment of the controversies. And the fact that LipstickOnAPigGate is a controversy—indeed, the fact that it’s a narrative in the first place—is the fault of the media. (Where does it end? Obama says he doesn’t play hockey, and Palin’s called herself a hockey mom, and moms are women, therefore Obama’s sexist?) The media, in allowing themselves to be so easily hijacked by campaign spin—we’ll repeat whatever accusations you fling at your opponent, no matter how ridiculous—are not only implying their own irrelevance in this whole campaign. They’re fostering it.

I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig, that Bernard Shaw line goes. You get dirty, and, besides, the pig likes it. One can’t help but wonder: Who’s really being wrestled with here? The McCain campaign may have thrown mud in this case, but it’s the media, after all, who are doing his dirty work.

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