In a piece about how John McCain has and should handle his status as onetime campaign press “it” candidate running against the media’s current crush (move on, seems to be the consensus from pundits from the left and right), MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough tells The New York Observer: “The last thing you want as a politician is to be pitied by voters or the press.”

If so, it doesn’t help McCain, then, to be compared in the same article to Britney Spears (admit it: even you have felt sorry for Spears at some point by now). ABC News’ Jake Tapper tells the Observer:

It’s difficult not to see McCain’s point that Obama has generally been getting not only more positive press but quantitatively more press, period. That just seems empirically true. But it is a bit like Britney Spears complaining that Miley Cyrus gets more publicity than her talent warrants. True, but haven’t you been there yourself?

(So if the candidates are pop stars, that makes Tapper et al… groupies? Paparazzi? Also, does this mean that McCain and Obama, all this time, have been lip-synching?)