It was in the Sunday New York Times. Front page. Just a little over
two weeks before the election. This is not an October surprise.

As the guys at Powerline put it, the piece didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about Cindy McCain or the Times.

Still, consider that the Times assigned two reporters
(Jodi Kantor and David Halbfinger) to the profile. We know that Kantor
trolled Facebook for trash among schoolmates of the McCains’
16-year-old daughter. That must be some kind of a first for the Times,
burrowing somewhere under the National Enquirer for journalistic
practices.

One who follows the media suspects this is not a first for the Times.

However, the most interesting part of this is the last little snip from this review:

Despite its remorseless vindictiveness, the Times
profile has one incidental benefit. It elicited a letter from Akin Gump
lawyer John Dowd on behalf of Mrs. McCain, making a point with somewhat
more passion than has been the custom of the McCain campaign:

“It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative
assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack
Obama’s drug dealer that he wrote about in his book Dreams [From] My
Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and
determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a
terrific lack of balance here.”

Among other things.