"HERE'S THE QUESTION voters should be asking themselves this week: Just how stupid does the McCain-Palin campaign think I am?

The answer: Dumb enough to hoodwink with charges so contrived and cynical they make your teeth ache.

Let's start with the most insidious of the assertions: that Barack Obama has supported teaching "comprehensive sex education" to kindergartners. The McCain campaign has put up an ad making that claim, citing legislation Obama voted for as an Illinois state senator.

Actually, the intent wasn't to teach young kids all about sex, but rather how to recognize improper physical contact, says Kelvy Brown, legislative coordinator for the Chicago Department of Public Health, which backed the bill.

"It was about teaching them what's not appropriate when it comes to touching, fondling, those types of things," Brown said.

Further, the 2003 legislation stipulated that any school sex education program had to be "age and developmentally appropriate" and have a parental opt out.

As the nonpartisan campaign watchdog FactCheck.org has made clear, this is a thoroughly dishonest ad.

No matter. The McCain campaign has shown it's ready and willing to say preposterous things to win.

Now, it's true the Obama camp has been guilty of some distortions of its own. Still, it's the McCain team that has made leveling false or misleading accusations its modus operandi.

Witness this week's other foray into flimflam: the charge that Obama had called GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin a porcine politico on Tuesday by saying "you can put lipstick on a pig - it's still a pig."

That expression is one that McCain himself has used a number of times, most notably to criticize Hillary Clinton's 2007 healthcare proposal. And in context, it's clear Obama invoked the phrase to portray McCain's policies as a continuation of the Bush administration's, and not to disparage Palin.

Indeed, the notion that it was a barb belittling Palin is so self-evidently absurd that Republican Mike Huckabee refused to play along. "It's an old expression," he told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "I do not think he was referring to Sarah Palin."

Of course he wasn't. And yet, the McCain camp quickly put up a Web ad portraying it as a sexist remark, and on Wednesday McCain spokespeople and surrogates served up similar accusations of disrespect on TV. Pressed about those claims on MSNBC, McCain senior policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer stumbled into a revealing moment. "It doesn't matter what the media thinks," she said. "What matters is what the American people think."

Translation: If we can dupe voters into believing Obama disparaged Palin, we can score political points.

Sadly, one of the McCain allies pushing this manufactured controversy has been former Massachusetts acting governor Jane Swift, who on a Tuesday McCain campaign conference call flatly accused Obama of calling Palin a pig.

On Wednesday, I noted to Swift that a reading of Obama's remarks simply doesn't lend credence to that charge. And, further, that McCain has used the same expression himself.

Well, replied Swift, Palin's convention speech joke about lipstick meant the word was very much associated with her in the public mind. "If it didn't intend to bring her into it, why would you choose that particular" formulation? she asked.

What's more, she said, some in the crowd listening to Obama had also taken his comment as a reference to Palin.

Think those arguments are flimsy? Well, consider her further contention: "Nobody but Barack Obama . . . can know what he intended," but the fact that she and others had found it offensive meant that he should "make the whole thing go away by saying, 'I shouldn't have said it.' "

So, let's see: Obama employs an everyday expression to make a legitimate political argument. His opponent's camp then strains an Achilles in a ludicrous attempt to twist his comment into a sexist insult.

And now, to end the controversy, Obama should apologize?

There's some pretzel logic for you.

McCain and Swift are the ones who should apologize.

Voters, meanwhile, should be insulted that the McCain campaign is trying to peddle them this kind of transparent trumpery."

Scott Lehigh on Boston.com