MAKING THE RIGHT NOISES.

By Dylan Matthews

Steve Benen points to Mark Halperin, of all people, being totally sensible on the media's role in the campaign. On the lipstick kerfluffle:

"They knew exactly what he was saying. It's an expression. And this is a victory for the McCain campaign in the sense that every day they can make this a pig fight in the mud. It's good for them because it's reducing Barack Obama's message even more. But I think this is a low point in the day and one of the low days of our collective coverage of this campaign. To spend even a minute on this expression, I think, is amazing and outrageous."

And on the Bridge to Nowhere lie:

"It's another thing that, again, I'm embarrassed about our profession for. She should be held more accountable for that. The Bridge to Nowhere thing is outrageous. And if you press them on it, they'll fall because they know they can't defend what they're saying. They're staying it on the stump as a core part of their message, it's in their advertising.

"I'm not saying the press should be out to get John McCain and Sarah Palin. But if a core part of their message is something that every journalism organization in the country has looked at and says it's demonstrably false, again, we're not doing our jobs if we just treat this as one of many things that's happening.

Halperin has shown glimmers of this kind of common sense in the past, most notably in 2004 when he sent a memo around ABC News noting that, "The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done." But for every noble admonition by him against a "focus on the trivial and superficial while the nation remains at war and teeters on the edge of an economic recession", there's a headline at The Page like "Obama Gets His Pancakes to Go" (h/t Avi). He's making the right noises, but I'll believe Halperin when headlines like "Independent Analysts: Obama Would Cut Taxes For More Americans than McCain" and "Palin Repeats Bridge to Nowhere Lie" appear on The Page. I'm not holding my breath.