Like we haven’t heard this before, but it’s all over Politico today, having happened at a conference they sponsored, so let’s look at it carefully. OK, it’s a whine, so maybe not so carefully.

First Halperin notes that the press coverage of this campaign was so biased that it is the worst job he’s seen the press do since the buildup to the Iraq War. Let that sink in a moment. Mark Halprein is acknowledging that the press coverage of the buildup to the Iraq War was some of the worst press work in recent memory. I’d say I agree. It led to the loss of thousands of US and coalition lives, to the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, to an upsurge in terroristic violence in the region, and to an enpenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars, leading to a deficit that has helped to cripple this country economically. Mark Halperin is comparing that ineptitude by the press, that laying down for Bush/Cheney, to the bias now? Seriously, Mark, even if it were a goal of Barack Obama he couldn’t fuck things up as bad as Bush has with Iraq. The comparison fails because of the magnitude of the press failings as regards to Iraq, and the magnitude of disaster those failings helped lead to.

But that ain’t all. Mark Halperin does have an example of the press coverage and how it was biased towards Obama. Get this — he cites bios of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama. I kid you not. Here’s the relevant passage from the Politico article:

Halperin, who maintains Time’s political site “The Page,” cited two New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.

“The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies,” Halperin said. “The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it case her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn’t talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that’s ever been written about her.”

The story about Michelle Obama, by contrast, was “like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is,” according to Halperin.

So it wasn’t a bias about the candidates or the issues they espoused, but about the candidate’s wives? Give me a fucking break! Halperin thinks profiles about the candidates’ wives is a prime example of the bias in the press? Hey, maybe he can focus on the coverage of the wives’ shoes next, or on coverage about the children of the candidates.

What a fraud.