John McCain cannot release an ad without fucking lying, can he?

John McCain must have lost his character just after he was released from captivity.

McCain has a new ad which essentially says Obama is Jesus and the Messiah and the Muslim Antichrist all rolled into one. (Naturally) But of course, McCain couldn’t just release the ad, no, he had to build the ad around the following “quote” from Barack Obama:

“I have become a symbol of America returning to her best traditions.”

Here’s the problem: the Right is throwing this around and clapping their collective cheeto paws together thinking they have proof that Obama is self-aggrandizing due to this quote, but it seems that Obama didn’t even say that, at least not the way it’s being reported.

First of all, fuck you, Dana Milbank for starting this, for abandoning journalistic integrity and reporting this. Media Matters explains:

Milbank did not cite a source for the quote, but Jonathan Weisman, also of the Post, reported on July 29: “In his closed door meeting with House Democrats Tuesday night, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama delivered a real zinger, according to a witness, suggesting that he was beginning to believe his own hype. … The 200,000 souls who thronged to his speech in Berlin came not just for him, he told the enthralled audience of congressional representatives. ‘I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,’ he said, according to the source.”

Milbank gave no indication that he contacted the Obama campaign or anyone at the event to confirm the accuracy of the quote.

But Weisman reportedly did hear from people at the event: House leadership aides who disputed interpretations — like Weisman’s and Milbank’s — of the comment as self-aggrandizing. Weisman wrote in an update:

[O]ne leadership aide said the full quote put it into a different context. According to that aide, Obama said, “It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign — that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have just become a symbol.”

If you read the entire Media Matters piece, you’ll see that the quote in its correct context (and with the words in their correct order) is along the lines of things Obama has been saying for several years, and is far more consistent with his campaign.

Unfortunately, many Americans are stupid and will take this “Obama thinks he’s the messiah” meme at face value. Regardless, spread the correct quote around to your dumb friends.

What’s funny is that this was debunked before the ad was even released. I wrote about it right here, when Rachel Maddow debunked it for Pat Buchanan on MSNBC. This shows clearly just how little character, and what little regard for the truth John McCain has. He’s showing himself to be more like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney every day, isn’t he?

To make things easy, here’s the clip of Rachel Maddow debunking this shit, again: