So all y'all read that piece in The New York Times about Cindy McCain and her drug habits and her second wife status in Washington circles and her distant relationship to husband John McCain her support of her husband?

If you didn't know any better, you'd think the NYT was one of those liberal elite media institutions that unfairly paint ugly pictures of candidate's spouses much in the way that the GOP and Fox News tried to portray Michelle Obama as an American-hating fistbumper who has never been proud of her country.

It's almost like…both sides are wrong! Judge for yourself this example of tit-for-tat, after the jump:

The Time's Michelle Obama profile:

Mrs. Obama’s nickname inside the campaign is “the closer” because she is skilled at persuading undecided voters to sign pledge cards. But as a smooth orator, she is also known as a connector, volunteering her own life lessons from working-class roots and discussing her confrontation with a culture of low expectations. …

The Cindy McCain piece:

Mrs. McCain, 54, describes herself as her husband’s best friend, though for the last two decades they have mostly lived apart, she in Arizona, he in Washington. She initially seemed like an ideal political partner, giving Mr. McCain a home state, money and contacts that jump-started his career. But as the years passed, she also became a liability at times. She played a role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, and just as her husband was rehabilitating his reputation, she was caught stealing drugs from her nonprofit organization to feed her addiction to painkillers. She has a fortune that sets the McCains apart from most other Americans, a problem in a presidential race that hinges on economic anxieties. She can be imprecise: she has repeatedly called herself an only child, for instance, even though she has two half-siblings, and has provided varying details about a 1994 mercy mission to Rwanda.

Not that Cindy McCain's questionable background shouldn't be delved into, if candidate's wives are open to scrutiny (and they are, at least during this election), but why try to dress it up as some sort of Metro/Lifestyle piece about Cindy McCain that just happened to fall in the Politics section of the paper? (It is actually part of a special series, The Long Run, "about the lives and careers of the Republican and Democratic candidates for president in 2008." And their spouses!)

The article pretends that it's more interested in Cindy's outsider status in Washington, as if her rap sheet was a drole bon mot for the parties she's planning as First Wife. When your alliances are that obvious, the only thing you drum up for your paper is ire from the other party. See: Oliver Stone's W.

Here's a tip, New York Times: subject of profile pieces in your pages usually agree to be interviewed, and if they refuse it's because they don't need a weatherman to see which way your wind blows. See: Karl Rove. But nice write-around!