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Shirts and skins. That's the framework the Daily Howler's Bob Somerby applies to people who are political news junkies, and it goes for liberals and conservatives alike. We human beings like to be told our side is right. We also like to ignore facts that fail to provide the tingling thrill of confirming our worldview. Somerby writes:

There are times, when you run a web site, when you’re stunned to discover the following fact: Readers have agreed with you down through the years only because they enjoy your conclusions. They’ll yelp and howl about the vile ways the words of the shirts have been misstated. But when someone misstate[s] the words of a skin, they’ll invent endless ways to support that.

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I was talking to a wise pundit the other day about politics, and this person said to me that Bob Somerby is "crazy." And I said the person was probably right. What I failed to add is, "So what? That's the point!" Josh Marshall, E.J. Dionne, Nicholas Kristof, Bob Herbert, Kevin Drum, The New Republic, Salon, Slate, The American Prospect, Washington Monthly... all make the rational decision not to talk about the role of the press corps in American politics, whether in covering up McCain's gaffes or in exaggerating Bill Clinton's pleasingly r-word Jesse Jackson remarks. Speaking the truth is a statement against interests.

Somerby goes on:

TO THE WORDS-IN-THEMSELVES: Once again, here’s Frank Rich, quoting two of the statements in question. We post this again for a reason:

RICH (4/6/08): Really, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of themselves for libeling John McCain. As a growing chorus reiterates, their refrains that Mr. McCain is ''willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq'' (as Mr. Obama said) or ''willing to keep this war going for 100 years'' are flat-out wrong.

We’ll skip the part about shame and libel—but there you see two of the criticized comments. And Rich is right about those remarks: They plainly aren’t what McCain said.

What did we notice, when we watched Josh [Marshall] on yesterday’s TPMtv report? The gentleman spends almost five minutes defending the criticized remarks. But he never repeats the remarks he’s defending! Readers, when you see work like that, you know two things: First, you’re being viewed as a rube—and second, you’re being run.

This is how Hannity treats his viewers! Down through the years, the shirts have always lustily cheered when we’ve mentioned that.

AN INTERPRETIVE PRINCIPLE: Once again, here’s the basic Q-and-A in question. You may think McCain is dreaming of something that just cannot be. But he plainly didn’t say that he wanted a hundred-year war. When he spoke about that hundred years, he was expressly describing a peacetime situation:

QUESTION (1/3/08): President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years—

MCCAIN: Maybe a hundred. We've been in South Korea. We've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That'd be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it's fine with me.

You may think McCain is dreaming here. But he plainly didn’t say that he was “willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq.”

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