Dear wankers: About that "giggling" ...

It can't be much fun being a wanker these days, what with freshly-baked, neo-con talking points crumbling into dust almost immediately after they're removed from the oven. Case in point: the hysterical screeching over poor Sen. John McCain being badly treated by journalists at a live press conference in Baghdad -- a claim that morphed rapidly downwards from outrageous "heckling" to simple "giggling." Oh, the humanity!

And, sadly, even if there was giggling, it appears that John "Straight Talk" McCain has only himself to blame, by trying to pass off an account of his open-air stroll through a Baghdad market so dishonestly that anyone who didn't giggle must have damn near ruptured themselves trying to keep it in:

If Sen. John McCain’s campaign for the GOP nomination gets seriously derailed by his dangerously absurd visit to Baghdad market on Sunday he can blame the press for that. Unwilling to play tourist during McCain's open-air stroll, reporters quickly revealed the extraordinary security that surrounded this purported "typical day" at the Shorja market.

Then, over the next two days, they went back and interviewed some of the merchants, who have thoroughly repudiated the sunny accounts of the visit offered by McCain and his congressional sidekicks.

But wait -- it gets better:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in a '60 Minutes' segment coming on Sunday says he misspoke in comments he made about security in Baghdad earlier this week and admitted that heavily armed troops and helicopter gunships accompanied him when he visited a market there...

In two interviews before the Army took McCain and 60 Minutes on the heavily guarded visit to the al-Shorja market last Sunday, the senator said security had improved in Iraq. Upon his return, he also told a news conference he had just come back from a neighborhood one could walk around in freely.

The remarks made headlines and he now regrets saying them. "Of course I am going to misspeak and I've done it on numerous occasions and I probably will do it in the future," says McCain. "I regret that when I divert attention to something I said from my message, but you know, that's just life," he tells Pelley, adding, "I'm happy, frankly, with the way I operate, otherwise it would be a lot less fun."

That's right, kids ... even McCain now openly admits that he was full of shit, at which point I think any journalist who knew what was going on had every right to giggle. Or snicker. Or chortle. Or guffaw. Or just burst into uncontrollable, tearful laughter.

But all this is history, of course. It's all so ... so ... several days ago, and you know it's just a matter of time before the wingnut stenographers known as the Blogging Tories will have a whole new talking point, sadly beginning with, "According to Matt Drudge, ..."

Give it time. You know it's coming. Right, Brian?

INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE, SHERMAN. From the archives, a piece about that whole "misspeaking" thing. Man, but that gets tiring after a while, doesn't it?