The infatuation with Barack Obama has reached the point where the media is apparently prepared to discredit its own reporting to cover his ass. In the latest ad from Team McCain, which even TNR said wasn’t dishonest, McCain connects Obama to Franklin Raines, the former CEO of now-bankrupt Fannie Mae. The Washington Post had reported that Raines had been contacted by Team Obama for economic advice, but now the paper’s “fact-checking” the ad and claim.

The latest McCain attack is particularly dubious…

The McCain video attempts to link Obama to Franklin Raines, the former CEO of the bankrupt mortgage giant, Fannie Mae, who also happens to be African-American. It then shows a photograph of an elderly white woman taxpayer who has supposedly been “stuck with the bill” as a result of the “extensive financial fraud” at Fannie Mae.

Please note the hinting by the Washington Post that this is racism. Think that’s ridiculous? Time tried to make the same claim.

So what evidence does the McCain campaign have for the supposed Obama-Raines connection? It is pretty flimsy, but it is not made up completely out of whole cloth. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers points to three items in the Washington Post in July and August. It turns out that the three items (including an editorial) all rely on the same single conversation, between Raines and a Washington Post reporter, Anita Huslin, who wrote a Style section profile of the discredited Fannie Mae boss that appeared on July 16. The profile reported that Raines, who retired from Fannie Mae four years ago, had “taken calls from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.”

So, er, he was advising the Obama campaign on mortgage and housing policy? Wouldn’t that make him, uh, an adviser on mortgage and housing policy? Not if you live in spinville!

Since this has now become a campaign issue, I asked Huslin to provide the exact circumstances of the quote. She explained that she was chatting with Raines during the photo shoot, and asked “if he was engaged at all with the Democrats’ quest for the White House. He said that he had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign. I asked him about what, and he said ‘oh, general housing, economy issues.’ (‘Not mortgage/foreclosure meltdown or Fannie-specific,’ I asked, and he said ‘no.’)”

By Raines’s own account, he took a couple of calls from someone on the Obama campaign, and they had some general discussions about economic issues. I have asked both Raines and the Obama people for more details on these calls, and will let you know if I receive a reply.

So now all of a sudden, when Barack Obama’s fanboys need to cover the Messiah’s ass, we learn, “Oh, he wasn’t talking about that specifically! Just, you know, mortgage and housing policy.” The Washington Post won’t, however, wait to hear back from even Raines before concluding that McCain’s ad is misleading because, er, it relied on the Washington Post’s reporting.

Keep spinning, boys. Keep spinning.