See that hit job on Cindy McCain?

It was in the Sunday New York Times. Front page. Just a little over two weeks before the election. This is not an October surprise.

As the guys at Powerline put it, the piece didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about Cindy McCain or the Times.

Still, consider that the Times assigned two reporters (Jodi Kantor and David Halbfinger) to the profile. We know that Kantor trolled Facebook for trash among schoolmates of the McCains’ 16-year-old daughter. That must be some kind of a first for the Times, burrowing somewhere under the National Enquirer for journalistic practices.

One who follows the media suspects this is not a first for the Times.

However, the most interesting part of this is the last little snip from this review:

Despite its remorseless vindictiveness, the Times profile has one incidental benefit. It elicited a letter from Akin Gump lawyer John Dowd on behalf of Mrs. McCain, making a point with somewhat more passion than has been the custom of the McCain campaign:

“It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack Obama’s drug dealer that he wrote about in his book Dreams [From] My Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a terrific lack of balance here.”

Among other things.