THE news media giveth, the news media taketh away.

John McCain – for years the Washington press corps’ favorite Republican – is now being widely portrayed as a politically pandering sell-out for having committed the grievous sin of speaking to a commencement at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.

Inclusiveness, apparently, only goes so far when you’re a media darling.

Never mind that, as Falwell himself noted in a New York Times op-ed piece, he’s the one who reached out to McCain – who in 2000 had denounced him as an “agent of intolerance” – rather than the other way around.

Never mind that, back in 1983 – when Falwell’s Moral Majority was at the height of its political clout – Ted Kennedy asked for a speaking invitation from Liberty and got it. At the time, a Times piece cited his courage for venturing into “the bastion of the conservative fundamentalist empire.”

Yet McCain is being disparaged – even though, in the event, he used the speech to ask the students at Falwell’s school to strenuously debate those with whom they disagree. “Let us argue with each other then,” he said. “Our differences are not petty. They often involve cherished beliefs and represent our best judgment about what is right for our country.”

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen is miffed that McCain did not instead turn to Falwell and denounce him. (Not even Ted Kennedy was that rude.) “I used to like John McCain,” moaned HBO’s Bill Maher.

McCain is also the subject of Sixties-style protests on at least three college campuses, including Columbia and the New School here in New York, where students and faculty tried to bar him from speaking.

(At his Columbia speech yesterday, the downpour obscured most of the protests. But McCain used the occasion to deliver much the same speech that he’d given at Liberty.)

Yet there have been no such denunciations of Howard Dean, the public face of the Democratic Party, for his recent interview on the “700 Club,” hosted by Pat Robertson – the same man who flatly declared that Ariel Sharon had been struck down by God for withdrawing from Gaza.

Dean has taken flak – but only because he used the occasion to blatantly distort the Democrats’ position on gay marriage, falsely telling the show’s evangelical viewers that the party platform declares that “marriage is between a man and a woman.”

But for having appeared on Robertson’s program? No – that’s widely seen as politically smart, reaching out to a constituency that has traditionally favored Republicans. (Though piously proclaiming that Democrats “have an enormous amount in common with the evangelical Christian community” seems pretty much a textbook definition of pandering.)

Likewise, Hillary Rodham Clinton is hailed for her widely reported attempts to reach out to the political center on key social issues, like abortion – even though she’s saying nothing that she said hasn’t said all along. Yet numerous political pundits have called her politically astute for moving beyond her base and broadening her political appeal.

Not so McCain.

Actually, much of the criticism of McCain comes from people who are finally waking up to the fact that, for all his lapses from GOP orthodoxy, the Arizona senator is very much a conservative and always has been – particularly on the kind of social issues on which liberalism and conservatism are conventionally defined.

That’s a fact that many on the left and in the media conveniently ignored two years ago, when they literally pleaded with McCain to run with John Kerry on the “dream team” that would, presumably, send President Bush packing.

But McCain is still very much the same outspoken maverick he was back then; he speaks his mind, whether or not he agrees with the party’s talking points.

So why is he now under attack – and not on the issues, but on his single greatest asset, his personal integrity?

Fact is, McCain has outlived his usefulness to those on the left.

As long as he was the fly in the GOP ointment – a weapon against President Bush – he was worshiped as the kind of Republican who might actually have been allowed to defeat Jimmy Smits on “West Wing.”

Now, however, he’s a different kind of Republican – one whose current strong poll numbers spell trouble for Hillary Clinton’s coronation.

And so, all of a sudden, he’s being portrayed as a conventional, conservative Republican – all wrong on the issues, sucking up to the wrong people, sacrificing his integrity in a blatant bid for votes.

That’s not the real John McCain, of course. But now that he might actually get elected – especially if the GOP suffers a disaster this fall – his free pass from the Washington press corps is rescinded.