Imagine if, instead of having on-court officials, NBA games were played like street games -- you call your own fouls. Fans watching at home would undoubtedly get into heated disputes about whether contact was made on a particular play, and if so, how much was too much. The sports press would talk about which players tend to honest about their calls, who tends to take dives, and so on. They'd also probably spend a lot of time looking at replays, doing Around the Horn-type discussions about particular plays, and generally presenting the basketball-following public with a framework through which to understand this now-odd sport.

Now let's say one day in this alternate NBA, Kermit Washington coldcocks Rudy Tomjanovich. Literally adding insult to injury, he flat-out refuses to acknowledge the act as call-worthy. With nobody in a position of authority over the contest, there's nothing to do but continue playing, careful to avoid the bloody and near-dead Tomjanovich lying in the middle of the court.

I put it to you that Kermit Washington is running for president on the Republican ticket, and that he's counting on our traditional reliance on the honor system to keep anyone from noticing what he's done. The question of what is the motivating drive of campaign journalism is the absolutely central issue to the mockery John McCain is making of this election. Every word out of his campaign -- whether from him, Sarah Palin or one of his surrogates -- is a bald-faced lie. If the point of campaign journalism is to inform voters, they need to confront this garbage much more strongly than they have been; indeed, that the fairly tepid response to McCain "stretching the truth" has been so well received in the liberal blogosphere is kind of embarrassing. McCain is lying to the public about anything and everything, constantly; a press that doesn't point this out in unambiguous terms is helping him.