Oh, and Dickie? Go ask E. J. Dionne how to be a journalist

Richard Cohen should stick a pencil up his ass and use it as a pogo stick to bounce off into the sunset. E.J. Dionne could do your job handily and still write his own column.

E. J. Dionne Jr. - Pulling the Curtain on Palin - washingtonpost.com

John McCain's campaign acknowledged this weekend that Sarah Palin is unprepared to be vice president or president of the United States.

Of course, McCain's people said no such thing. But their actions told you all you needed to know.

McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all subjected themselves to tough questioning on the regular Sunday news programs. Palin was the only no-show. And it's not just the Sunday interviews. She has not opened herself to any serious questioning since McCain picked her to be next in line for the presidency.

McCain's advisers clearly don't trust Palin to answer questions about policy and don't want her to answer many of the questions that have been raised about her tenure as governor of Alaska.

Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, gave the game away when he said on "Fox News Sunday" that she would not meet with reporters until they showed a willingness to treat her "with some level of respect and deference."

Deference? That's a word used in monarchies or aristocracies. Democracies don't give "deference" to politicians. When have McCain, Obama, Biden or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton asked for deference?

A few hours later came the announcement that Palin would grant an interview to ABC News's Charlie Gibson. Recall that Gibson was the co-host of an ABC News debate last April during which Obama faced a relentless pounding. Here's hoping that a sense of fairness will lead Gibson to be comparably tough on Palin this week. If he treats her more deferentially than he did Obama, we will know that McCain's war on the media is working.

'Zackly. When corporate megaliths like telecoms, defense contractors, and entertainment empires own all the major media in the country, America can expect to have kissups and pissboys as so-called "journalists." Their bosses know which side of the political bread has the butter.

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