So will the press end their love affair with John McCain now that his "soulmate" is off-limits?

The media's shameless sucking up to John McCain has largely been due to the kind of backslapping familiarity he's allowed them over the years. Now he's putting Sarah Palin into the campaign equivalent of a high tower with a moat full of crocodiles around it -- off limits to anyone who might dare catch her in one of her many outright lies speak to her:

More than 40 million people tuned in last week to listen to the speech from Palin, the 44-year-old, first-term governor whom McCain announced as his surprise vice presidential pick just days before. Since then, that basic script is all anyone has heard from her publicly, and her only interaction with the media was a brief conversation with a small group of reporters on her plane Monday _ off the record at her handlers' insistence.

Associated Press reporters were not on the plane, but an aide told the journalists on board that all Palin flights would be off the record unless the media were told otherwise. At least one reporter objected. Two people on the flight said the Palins greeted the media and they chatted about who had been to Alaska, but little else was said.

Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell were just discussing how the McCain camapaign gets away with having Palin lie over and over and over again, and O'Donnell talked about Palin's "popularity." It seems to me that Barack Obama was, until this shiny new object was dangled before the media, also "popular" and yet the media were all too willing to give credence to the notion that he was some kind of secret Islamic terrorist. So why the media should cower from calling Palin the liar that she is just because the wingnuts think she's some kind of small-government reformer when her record actually shows that she'll grab all the Federal cash she can; that she's some kind of "maverick" when she's actually a Dominionist theocrat; that she's just like your average soccer mom; and for the wingnut men, that somehow they'll have the opportunity to have sex with her, is a mystery.

It will be interesting to see whether the media respond to the placement of Palin as off-limits to them, the positioning of her as beyond questioning, the way they would if her name were, say, "Hillary Clinton."

Given who owns the media companies, I'm not putting my money on yes. For I am no fool.