Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m completely in the tank for Obama. I’ve phone banked for him and I’m heading to Roanoke later this week to work as a volunteer to get the vote out. If you’ve read any of the other entries on this blog, you know that I’m a flaming liberal.

I don’t support John McCain for many reasons, chief among them his decision to add the incredibly unqualified Sarah Palin to the ticket. Well, the truth is I wouldn’t have supported McCain no matter who he named as a running mate, but his decision to tap Palin made me feel a lot better about it.

It’s late and I don’t have the energy to go off on Sarah’s shortcomings — her fake reformer credentials, her questionable ethics, her lack of intellectual curiosity, her inability to form complete sentences, her eagerness to incite the fear, hate and insecurities of the mob. Shit, there’s really not anything I like about her.

Which is why what I’m about to write feels sort of weird: I’m bothered by this whole “whack job” blowup. In case you missed it, Politico’s Mike Allen says an unnamed McCain staffer used the words to describe Palin. Actually, it’s probably best to describe it as a partial quote:

***In convo with Playbook, a top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless “diva” description, calling her “a whack job.”

That’s it — one, unattributed sentence inserted in the middle of his Playbook column. But that pithy description caused a furor on the blogs today. Of course, it comes as most major media and bloggers are preparing their autopsies of the imploding McCain campaign, which, in its final days, has turned into a back-biting snake pit. It’s everyone for themselves. People are pointing fingers and laying blame wherever they can.

So, in this type of atmosphere, a “top McCain adviser” calling Palin a “whack job” is certain to ignite the blogosphere, as well as earn mentions in the main stream media.

Does anyone see the problem here? If a top adviser actually callled the Republican nominee for vice president a whack job, don’t we deserve more than this one little sentence? And why bury it deep in the column? Can we get a little information on the circumstances behind this remark?

I’m not doubting that someone said it to him. And I’m certainly not saying the description doesn’t apply.

But allowing top advisers to hide behind anonymity to throw these kind of caustic remarks around is a slippery slope. Politico is a respected, credible news organization, which is one reason the “whack job” comment had such currency. But where is the next anonymous accusation going to come from?

Politico should have known the firestorm that reporting this remark was going to cause. In this case, the public would have been much better served with a little less gossip and a little more context.

[Updated: I meant to add these last night but opted for sleep, instead. Here is what bloggers are saying about the whack job comment.]

Joe Sudby @ Americablog:

Nasty. Probably true, but nasty. Just glad the Republicans are putting so much time into hating each other.

Rich Lowry @ The Corner on National Review Online:

This is part of the problem with Palin getting assigned aides with no loyalty to her. I’ve never been a “Free Sarah Palin” type. I’m in the Krauthammer school that the McCain campaign probably let her do big high-stakes media interviews too soon and should have waited while she was more fully briefed-up. But the mishandling of Palin that’s been evident over the last week—from the clothes fiasco that wasn’t her doing to the sniping at her from within the campaign—has been appalling.

David Mizner @ The Daily Kos:

Whack job. It’s a good charge, cause it’s true! This is one of my favorite leaks from the anti-Palin forces working for McCain, right up with the claim that she’s “going rogue.” Like Iran?

I’ve never seen a breakdown in discipline like this on a presidential campaign. It testifies to McCain’s lack of leadership and to the state of his campaign. Knowing they’re going to lose, Mittens’ kittens are angling for advantage against Palin going into the 2012 primary.

Clark Kent @ Sarah Palin Must Be Stopped:

It’s getting to the point where we have to say this stuff is too good for us to be making it up. With every passing day, new insults are being foisted upon Sarah Palin — by John McCain’s own staffers. Yesterday, she was a diva. Today, according to news reports, she’s a “whack job.”

Melvin Crabtree @ Crabbie’s Hollywood:

This was probably the kindest term he could think of. McCain’s campaign is in full meltdown mode. The sad thing is that, if he’d just stuck with his old McCain Straight-Talk Express routine and picked a decent running mate, he might’ve actually won. But he sold his soul to the Rovians and now he’ll have to drag his gimpy arms back to Arizona. Poor old, muddle-brained putz.

I’m not sure why this YouTube clip contrasting WFTV-Orlando anchor Barbara West’s interviews with Joe Biden and John McCain makes me so angry. We’ve grown to expect media bias at the cable networks, whether it’s the unabashed right-wingers at FOX News or the liberals at MSNBC. So maybe it’s a little idealistic to still expect integrity and objectivity in our local news anchors.

West’s questions were pulled directly from the Republican Party’s talking points (see the entire interview here), which shouldn’t be surprising considering that her husband is a Republican operative. I don’t have a problem with West or any reporter asking the candidates tough questions, but these were less questions and more accusations.

Compare the way she approached Biden with her earlier interview of McCain, where she literally spoon-fed him big juicy meatballs.

Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas, whom I worked with for several years and who is a pretty middle-of-the road guy politically, had this to say about West:

You have to see this to believe it.

This is the most embarrassing interview I’ve ever seen on local television. This has nothing to do with whether you are for Obama or McCain. It’s about being professional. Quoting Karl Marx?

Even Sean Hannity wouldn’t be so ham-handed. Making matters worse, it looks like Barbara is just dumbly reading questions someone just handed her, then staring blankly at the screen. Biden made her look like a complete dimwit. Not that this was hard.

How could WFTV allow this to happen?

Her tone, her body language and the way the questions were phrased made it very clear that she was hoping she could goad Biden into a gotcha moment. She failed there miserably. But if her mission was to become a hero to the far right, then she succeeded with flying colors.

Unfortunately, she just reinforced the public’s perception that journalists have their own agenda. That’s a shame for the legions of hard-working journalists who are NOT partisan hacks.

Firedoglake has a petiton asking WFTV for an on-air apology. Go sign it. It won’t accomplish anything but it might make you feel better.

The first is a piece by the American News Project that explains how Big Oil has borrowed a page out Big Tobacco’s playbook — use junk science and slick marketing to stir doubt and uncertainty about real, credible scientific research.

The second clip is a Colbert Nation spoof on the greenwashing fed to the American public by the oil companies. As Stephen Colbert says, “A lot of people talk about loving the earth but how many of them actually penetrate it?”

The third is an ad titled, “Repower America,” created by Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection.  ABC refused to run the ad because it considered it too “controversial.” Why? Is it because ABC doesn’t want to offend its other clients — the ones who give the network millions to help Americans feel all warm and cozy about oil and coal? You can ask ABC yourself by clicking here.

Keith Olberman at his best. He goes to town on Palin. Does Sara Palin really want to go there? Does she really want to throw stones when it comes to someone’s association with seditionists and religious nut jobbers? She’s got a domestic terrorist and witch doctor of her own in her closet, as Olberman so sarcastically points out.

So which John McCain story line do you believe? The carefully crafted legend about the hero whose character and convictions were forged in the fires of hell, a tale perpetuated in today’s Washington Post story by Michael Dobbs? Or the narrative spun in Tim Dickinson’s Rolling Stone piece that questions McCain’s bravery, his honesty and paints him as a lothario whose life has been about putting his own ambitions above everything else?

The stories are a study in contrast. Both reporters talked to former P.O.W.s who spent time in camps with McCain. Among those Dickinson spoke to was John Dramesi who, according to RS “went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command.”

Though Dramesi and McCain share a common bond, Dramesi is not an admirer of the Arizona senator.

Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain’s service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot’s behavior as heroic — “he wasn’t exceptional one way or the other” — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. “This business of my country before my life?” Dramesi says. “Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he’d be dead.”

In the WaPo, Dobbs writes:

His resistance of his captors — especially his refusal to accept an offer that would have freed him before his comrades — forged his character, taught him the meaning of honor and, eventually, launched him on a meteoric political career.

Before his final, fateful bombing mission, McCain had been a gregarious flyboy “whose ambitions did not go much beyond being a commander of a squadron,” according to Joe McCain, his younger brother. The decision to reject early release, Joe McCain believes, was “the most important single moment of his entire life” and turned him into a potential commander in chief. “It showed,” his brother said, “that he can make tough decisions in tough times.”