While realizing that the NY Times launched the first salvo, this silly bluster from McCain is a bad idea for at least two reasons. First - you don't inflame fights with people who buy their ink by the barrel. And, second, you realize that there are now plenty of journalists scouring the gutters in DC for anything and everything they can dig up on McCain. The last thing you want to do is fire them up even more. I really don't relish the thought of reading about the sexploits of some now seventy-something year-old man.
John McCain’s campaign promised to “go to war” against The New York Times Wednesday night after the newspaper posted its long-awaited story on McCain's alleged relationship with a telecom lobbyist. Both McCain and the woman in question denied having a romantic relationship.


We have to consider all of this GOOD NEWS!
Every time the NYT exposes their bias its a minor setback for their victim (in the short term) but a mighty boomerang back on their own credibility for the long term! Their dirty tricks have to be driven home time after time because many people don't want to believe the NYT is fallible. But everytime NYT pulls a stunt like this they reveal to the whole world, even to their closest "friends", that they are no longer trustworthy, and the NYT finally loses ALL credibility and goes out of business!
What? Are you laughing?? You don't think the New York Times is capable of ever going out of business?! Well people believe the Titanic could sink, but it did.
Posted by: Miklo | Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 06:13 PM
The TITANIC wouldn't sink - but it did!
Posted by: Miklo | Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 06:14 PM
The last time this guy went to war he ended up in a lake. And now he's 70-plus...
Posted by: BobInStamford | Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 06:41 PM
It doesn't matter if McCain fights the NYT or ignores them. Either way the NYT is going to fight him. Ink by the barrel is already being used and that will continue.
Same thing about those journalists scouring the gutters. They are doing their best to find more dirt. That won't stop or lessen if McCain doesn't confront. And exactly how are they going to look even more?
An idiotic belief - which never seems to die - is that candidates won't be shat upon in the absence of evidence or if they are nice to the media on the other side.
Posted by: K | Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 07:35 PM
I have been half expecting McCain to pull a Howard Dean but not the venerable (?) NYT.
It shows how silly they think we all are...
Ted
Posted by: Ted | Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 08:16 PM
He'll be painted as an amalgam of Wilbur Mills, Gary Hart, Larry Craig, and Mark Foley before the NYT is done.
Posted by: Yoda | Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 08:51 PM
"--- He'll be painted as an amalgam of Wilbur Mills, Gary Hart, Larry Craig, and Mark Foley before the NYT is done. ---"
Twisted leftist moonbat driven ideology aside, I gotta wonder if there is some greasing of palms and exchanges of massive amounts of green papers adorned with portraits of dead presidents between the NYT, the DNC/DLC/other parts of the Democrat party apparatus and possibly the Obama and Hillary campaigns to do all this dirt-digging.
I mean, the NYT is mostly a pile of marxists that buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ream and all... but advertising and subscriptions can't be the only things paying for that drivel they print, can it?
Posted by: seekeronos | Friday, February 22, 2008 at 12:41 AM
I'm surprised that you say, Dan, that McCain's declaration of war on the NYT is bluster, and that one shouldn't rile the rattlesnake! What happened to "speaking truth to power"?
"who steals my purse steals trash; but he that filches my good name makes me poor indeed." We all know how McCain feels about Honour, and he is not one to take sitting down that he's being mugged for what he holds most dear!
Don't take Maverick's declaration of war lightly; and pray he becomes POTUS, because we might then see the FBI in the offices of the NYT enforcing the Patriot Act.
Posted by: elixelx | Friday, February 22, 2008 at 04:38 AM