Last week, in an apparent effort to paint Sen. Hillary Clinton as self-absorbed, the AP's Ron Fournier counted the number of times she used “some variation of the pronoun 'I'” in her convention speech. Fournier came up with 17. Media Matters checked his work, and found 21 such uses. But Fournier's point was undermined by the fact that at least 13 of those uses of the pronoun were about Clinton's support for Obama, the importance of the 2008 election, or what matters in the election.
So ... when can we expect Fournier to tally up the number of times John “cause greater than self” McCain used the pronoun “I” in his convention speech? It's well over 100 -- and that doesn't even count variations.
Or has Ron Fournier suddenly realized that such an exercise would be pointless? He'd be right, but you have to wonder about the timing of his epiphany.