to be fair to John McCain . . .

[realthog]

. . . he probably has difficulty knowing what honesty, truth and integrity actually are, mixing with the kind of people he mixes with. That would perhaps explain the incessant string of lies and smears concerning Barack Obama that has erupted from his mouth every time he's opened it during this campaign. I don't know that this excuses him, but it does at least explain why an elderly codger finds it hard to recognize why others place a certain value on honour.

Take this latest antic by McCain's buddy Rush Limbaugh, for example, as reported today by Media Matters for America. Their summary reads:

Rush Limbaugh played an audio clip "montage" from Charlie Rose's interview of Tom Brokaw, in which Limbaugh asserted that Rose and Brokaw were "trying to figure out who Obama is." In fact, Limbaugh heavily edited the clip, at one point falsely suggesting that Brokaw expressed the opinion that "there's a lot about him [Obama] that we don't know," when in fact Brokaw attributed that assertion to "conservative commentators."

There's lots more crookedness from Limbaugh in his distortion of the interview; the full Media Matters report on it is worth a read.

And I guess these are the standards McCain believes he's supposed to adhere to. No wonder he gets "the truth thing" wrong so repeatedly.

It can't help that he sees so much of Sarah Palin, either.