Update: If you haven't yet seen John McCain saying "I really didn't love America until I was deprived of her company", here's video from Dan Abrams' show including McCain's comments:

:: :: ::

McCain's most recent formulation of "I really didn't love America" came in March during a one-hour interview on Sean Hannity's show on FOX News Channel. Here's a transcript:

HANNITY: You spent two years of this five-and-a-half-year period in solitary confinement. What does that do to a person, to spend that much time in solitary confinement?

MCCAIN: I think it makes you a better person. Obviously, it makes you love America. I really didn't love America until I was deprived of her company.

Obviously, there's absolutely nothing wrong with what McCain said to Sean Hannity. (Edit: I put this in bold to make sure people get the point that the issue here is the hypocrisy of attacking Michelle, and FOX News' exclusion of the comment from their transcript.)

But it does create a bit of a problem for Hannity and the rest of the GOP freakshow,  because McCain's comment was essentially identical to Michelle Obama's comment about being "really proud" of America.

Combined with McCain's concession that "it's tough" to be proud of America, his comments on Hannity's program pretty much eviscerate the right-wing attack machine's ability to go smear Michelle Obama.

I probably should not have been surprised when I discovered that the FOX News' transcript of the interview does not contain any reference to the exchange whatsoever. Nada.

Fortunately, even though FOX excluded the remarks from its transcript, the transcript on RealClearPolitics.com does contain a full transcript of the exhange -- otherwise McCain's remarks might never have come to light.

I suppose there might be some innocent explanation for how FOXNews.com somehow managed to erase that politically damaging exchange from their website, but I'll bet the odds of that explanation being true are less than 1%. Probably far less.

Everybody already knows that FOX is conservative, but doesn't doctoring the transcript -- as they seem to have done -- violate every journalistic standard an MSM organization should have?