What Is In The Traditional Media's Water

Yesterday, the LA Times ran a story about how John McCain was a bad pilot who crashed a lot of planes.

John McCain was training in his AD-6 Skyraider on an overcast Texas morning in 1960 when he slammed into Corpus Christi Bay and sheared the skin off his plane's wings.

McCain recounted the accident decades later in his autobiography. "The engine quit while I was practicing landings," he wrote. But an investigation board at the Naval Aviation Safety Center found no evidence of engine failure.

The 23-year-old junior lieutenant wasn't paying attention and erred in using "a power setting too low to maintain level flight in a turn," investigators concluded.

The crash was one of three early in McCain's aviation career in which his flying skills and judgment were faulted or questioned by Navy officials.

Today, the AP joins in with this story about his links to the right-wing US Council for World Freedom.

WASHINGTON - GOP presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.

McCain's ties are facing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.

The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.

As the report intimates, this is all happening because of that media desire for "balance." If McCain attacks Obama for past connections, the need arises to find some connections to McCain and hype them. I actually think it's ultimately a negative consequence - they simply have to find a foil to balance each side, because hey, everybody knows Nazis, right? Also, there's a qualitative difference between McCain actually attending these meetings 25 years ago, when he was Obama's age, and Obama sitting on a board with Bill Ayers, whose more heinous activities occurred when Obama was 8 and who is now a professor.

So maybe the answer is for the media to ignore all of this.