There appears to be a growing consensus in the pro-Obama blogosphere that John McCain didn’t steal the cross-in-the-dirt story from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Instead, he stole it from Charles Colson’s 1983 book, Loving God. So a few minutes ago I asked Mark Salter, the alleged creator of the cross-in-the-dirt myth, “Have you ever read Colson’s book? Parts of it? Familiar with parts of it? Did you get it from Colson second-hand?” I also asked Salter his position on the increasingly momentous sandal vs. stick debate. His response:

Never read it. Neither has the senator. I’ll leave the great stick/sandal controversy to people with a lot more time on their hands than I have and a lot less reason than your typical paranoid schizophrenic. Introducing a note of common sense — such as the possibility that an ad maker used a little artistic license — often disturbs them more than it helps.