Manna from MSM heaven

What an excellent press day looks like:

• Charlie Gibson's interview of Sarah Palin is not groveling, as was feared after the McCain camp said it wanted interviews that showed "deference." Gibson actually kind of overtly quizzes her on the "Bush doctrine" among other topics, pressing her for answers that are clearly never going to deviate from the ones she was given. It was a stupid gotcha question, even if you'd still like it not to be way over the vice president's head.
  
  
• The AP's headline is "Palin Tries to Defend Qualifications in Interview", prompting TPM to hand their AP-criticism duties over to the Pantload. (n.b. "riding the tire swing" is the former's term for writing pro-McCain copy.)
  
  
• WaPo's Anne Kornblut, before getting to the humiliating bill of particulars in the Gibson interview, puts Palin on blast for linking Iraq to 9/11, a link that has "been rejected even by the president himself." This is even though the audience for the remarks in question was an Iraq-bound brigade including her son. I don't have a problem with it, exactly (although that lie was better corrected when it was Bush telling it to the country), but it's a nice surprise. [Update: Bill Kristol is hopping mad about this one, which is always a good sign]
  
  
• The AP's Charles Babington, whose piece on Obama's convention speech was so negative that Keith Olbermann wanted to fight the guy, now writes an "Analysis:" piece that begins "The 'Straight Talk Express' Has Veered Into Doublespeak." It's literally a story about how much McCain and his campaign have been lying, which is about all one could hope for.
  
  
• All one could hope for... except the fabled expose of Cindy McCain's drug habit, "A Tangled Story of Addiction"! The web version is five pages. The interview that appeared to have been scrubbed earlier today is just one source for what I'm sure is a very fair and evenhanded account of Cindy McCain's drug addiction, the inappropriate measures John McCain took to score for her, and the lives it ruined.