It was incredibly odd to watch the Washington Post denounce a McCain ad for using such a flimsy source as...The Washington Post. But James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal really used the perfect metaphor to mock it on Monday, a Star Trek episode where an all-powerful computer had to be fed self-contradictory statements so it would self-destruct:

Invariably, Captain Kirk and the other protagonists would save mankind by using illogic to fight the computer. They would feed the computer some paradox or logically incoherent statement, such as "Everything I say is a lie," which would overload the computer's logic circuits and destroy it.

Last week John McCain's campaign put out an ad criticizing Barack Obama for his ties to Franklin Raines, former CEO of Fannie Mae. The ad said that Obama relies on Raines "for 'advice on mortgage and housing policy.' " The Washington Post claims that the McCain ad is "a stretch":

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 business reporter, Anita Huslin, who wrote a profile of the discredited Fannie Mae boss that appeared 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 the Washington Post is saying you can't believe McCain's ad because it is based on reporting in . . . the Washington Post. The Washington Post is not a reliable source of information, according to the Washington Post.

But if the Washington Post is not a reliable source of information, how can we believe the Washington Post when it says it's not a reliable source of information? But if we don't believe the Washington Post when it says it's not a reliable source of information, then we must believe the Washington Post is a reliable source of information, in which case how can we believe the Washington Post is not a reliable source of information. But if . . .

You get the picture. Clearly this is part of a sinister plot by the Obama-coddling mainstream media to induce madness in all Americans who have the capacity for logical thought, rendering them unable to vote and ensuring the election is decided by Obama backers who act totally on emotion.

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.