2008 started "off" to say the least, for The New York Times. First it was the hiring of Bill Krystol as an Op/Ed columnist. Then it was their craptacular endorsement of both Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Yet, if we're going to cast aspersions, let's not forget the embarrassment and disgrace Judith Miller's aiding and abetting of the Bush Administration brought to the paper's credibility not so long ago.

So it's just amazing that they'll come out with a hit job against John McCain. In an allegedly "investigative" report of John McCain's ethics, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk is a thinly vield gossip piece about whether he was lobbied hard, really really hard, by a woman called Vicki Iseman.

I am of two minds about this. Let me start with the deep and ponderous one first :

Look, anybody who has been married ought to never take anybody else's private life as a barometer of their professional shortcomings. Especially when you have someone like Hillary Clinton in the running.

Marriages are the things myths are made of. They have complete, secret and public lives separate from the people who are actually involved in the marriage.

Believe me, I can attest to the fact that my marriage, in the lips and minds of many of my neighbors and friends, has a whole life and identity of its own; separate from the day to day reality of life with the father of my children. Which is why I am sensitive of hit jobs like the one lobbed against McCain.

Look, people stay married for a lot of reasons. Look at the Clintons. What is disheartening about this article is that it perpetuates a pattern of attacks against the McCains. If it wasn't the misogynist attacks against Cindi for taking pain killers for whatever ailed her, their detractors threw every racist epithet for them having adopted a dark-skinned Bangladeshi girl.

Yet that was their political adversaries. For a newspaper of record to join in the lynch party, it's just really crossing a line.

And on that note, let me go now really shallow for my second thought of the day :

I am sorry but, as far as the two contestants go, Cindi wins hands down. Look at the woman! *I* would hit that. Cindi McCain is smart, funny, sexy and a billionairess ... Hello! Just sign me up for the MILF bandwagon.

So people, back off the private lives of the McCains and all other candidates.

In a country where the majority of divorces happen among people who call themselves Christian Fundamentalists, and usually after they've found Jesus, let's just remind y'all about that one story about the woman, the carpenter from Nazareth and the throwing of stones.

Seriously :

Back.

The.

F&^%.

Off.