"If you were really savvy, you'd 'manipulate' the media into a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix..."

"... comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can't possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort. Who knows? It's a long shot, but if you could pull it off, a really cunning media manipulator might succeed in manipulating Howie's buddies into spending the month after Labor Day outbidding each other in some insane Who Wants To Be An Effete Condescending Media Snob?"

Mark Steyn is particularly amusing lashing at what WaPo's Howard Kurtz has to say about the McCain campaign trying to manipulate the media. Power Line has something to say too.

I'd say something about it myself too, but I simply haven't got the time this morning. Please carry on without me.

ADDED: I have a few minutes now, so let me read Kurtz closely:

The McCain camp has already accused the MSM of trying to "destroy" the governor of Alaska. So any challenge to her record or her veracity can now be cast as the product of an oh-so-unfair press. Which, needless to say, doesn't exactly please reporters.....

As for the sudden insistence that Palin is a delicate flower who must be shielded from harsh rhetoric, take this example.

She doesn't need to be shielded. Bring on the "harsh rhetoric." It's made her the most popular politician in America. We bloggers ravenously await your next nugget of harsh rhetoric. And we will make you look bad when it's sexist or unfair. If that makes you mad... well, who cares if you're mad? But it's not going to win you back the respect that you lose when your "harsh rhetoric" is biased.

The lipstick imbroglio is evidence that the Drudge/Fox/New York Post axis can drive just about any story into mainstream land. Does anyone seriously believe that Barack Obama was calling Sarah Palin a pig? What about the fact that McCain has used "lipstick on a pig" before? What about the book by that title by former McCain aide Torie Clarke? Never mind: get the cable bookers to line up women on opposite sides of the lipstick divide and let them claw at each other!

Blah! I'm sick of the lipstick thing, but please. The fact that there is an old expression isn't enough. What if Obama opponents took to saying "pot calling the kettle black" or "call a spade a spade." There would be no end to the outrage... and rightly so. I don't what to hear the "old expression" argument from anyone who won't say they'd make the same argument if the tables were turned.

And Howard... "line up women on opposite sides of the lipstick divide and let them claw at each other..." Now, you're using the image of the catfight! You're trying to say that Obama didn't mean to refer to a pig, and you're clearly referring to cats and doing so in a way that is traditionally used to diminish women.

Ah, enough of this for now.