The “cross-in-the-dirt” controversy has taken a comic turn with the latest pronouncement from Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan. Writing this morning, Sullivan says that “pursuing the cross-in-the-dirt evangelical parable as it might have happened to McCain is in no way impugning anyone’s war record.” It’s not even “disputing in any way what McCain did in Vietnam, his heroism, his sacrifice or any jot and tittle of his combat in arms and time in captivity.” What it’s really about is how an “urban legend in Christianist circles [going back, Sullivan says, to Charles Colson]…reshaped and altered an actual, utterly believable story.”

Team McCain reshaped and altered the utterly believable story, Sullivan says, to appeal to the evangelical base, beginning in the 2000 campaign. (And we all know how hard John “agents of intolerance” McCain was working to sweet-talk evangelicals back in 2000.) Anyway, Exhibit A in this is a McCain campaign ad telling the cross-in-the-dirt story. In the ad, we see video of someone making a cross in dirt — using a stick. And McCain had said the North Vietnamese guard used his sandal. Aha!

If that ad is not actually true – and its depiction of the cross in the dirt we know is false (according to McCain, it was done with a sandal; in the ad it is done, as in [Charles] Colson’s account, with a stick) – it’s a question of challenging a campaign’s veracity, and what can only be called a cynical use of religion. Could the campaign confirm that the ad itself is visually incompatible with the Salter story?…

Now, you might think the stick/sandal thing is not enormously important to the story. But it is, in fact, very, very important:

This incident is not part of McCain’s military service – certainly not one he thought was in any way salient in his first 12,000 word account of his experience. It is part of his 2000 and 2008 campaigns and the religious mythology they coopted in order to appeal to a very specific audience. If a blogger cannot raise factual questions about a campaign ad and a campaign narrative, he’s not really worth much.
If you want a simple campaign question how’s this: why did John McCain approve a message about a searing event in his life when the image in the ad is not compatible with what he said happened?