If a politician falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does he make a sound?

John McCain has fallen, but don't fret, the press is there to get him up.
If you watched or read the news this week you probably know all about Jesse Jackson's crude comments about Barack Obama. But, what does that have to do with you? Will his comments change your life in any way?
But did you hear that John McCain thinks the Social Security system is not just broke but it's very existence is a disgrace. Did you hear that John "I don't really understand economics" McCain's main economics advisor said (as an official representative of the McCain campaign) that we are a nation of whiners, because the economy really isn't that bad? Did you hear that while he was in Pittsburgh he blatantly pandered to the people of Pennsylvania by replacing the Green Bay Packers with the Pittsburgh Steelers in a story he has told many times? Then he said it was just a mistake. Did you hear him "joke" about killing people by getting them hooked on cigarettes? Well, the people he referred to were Iranians, so I guess that's OK ... at least according to the media. Did you hear about Jesse Jackson?
There was more. Some of the dumbest things said so far in the campaign. Significant misrepresentations of McCain's record. And a candidate who couldn't remember where he stood on some issues that would normally be important to a presidential candidate.
But the Beltway Press is so far up his rear end that they let him slide.
Max Bergmann has more at the Huffington Post.

This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain's efforts to become the next president of the United States. But you wouldn't know it if you watched any of the mainstream media outlets or followed political reporting in the major newspapers. During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him.

So, why do the media do it? Everyone has a theory or explanation. But most journalists who cover him on a regular basis just say they like him. Maybe that's why Obama gets 24-hours-a-day press coverage and McCain does not. Maybe that's why they don't report that McCain usually doesn't work weekends. Maybe that explains why some papers send their A-Team after Obama.

"The Post has teams of reporters on each candidate. Stephens, who came from the investigative unit, has been assigned to report on Obama; another reporter, Kimberley Kindy, is doing the same on McCain. "

Joe Stephens is an investigative reporter who has won three Polk Awards, and is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. And Kimberly Kindy? She was hired by the Washington Post in May and hasn’t been heard from since writing two articles about McCain at the end of May. We anxiously await the explosive investigative piece Ms. Kindy has apparently been working on for the past six weeks.

UPDATE:

• John McCain's Very Bad Week: A Cheat Sheet
• Another one.