The Washington Post ran a Howard Kurtz column today on the differences between how Obama is treated on the various daytime/night talkshows — The View, Letterman, Ellen, etc. — and how John McCain is confronted:

When Obama appeared on “Ellen” 10 days ago, the host challenged him: “Michelle was on the show, and she was talking some smack about your moves.” The senator from Illinois responded, “I am a better dancer than John McCain.”

But when McCain was a guest last spring, DeGeneres chided him on the issue of gay marriage, saying, “It just seems like there is this old way of thinking that we are not all the same.” McCain awkwardly responded that “we just have a disagreement” and wished her “every happiness.” Both McCain and Obama oppose gay marriage to varying degrees.

The contrast was equally striking on “The View.” When Obama chatted up the ladies in March, ABC newswoman Barbara Walters told him: “Maybe we shouldn’t say this. We thought you were very sexy.”

But when McCain appeared in September, co-host Joy Behar invoked two of his ads, one accusing Obama of supporting sex education for kindergartners and the other charging that Obama’s lipstick-on-a-pig comment was directed at Palin. “Those two ads are untrue, they’re lies,” Behar said, forcing McCain on the defensive. And Whoopi Goldberg asked whether she should “fear being returned to slavery” in a McCain administration.

It is a case for the liberalism of the media, and Kurtz acknowledges this.