McCain's Housing Crises

The boys and girls over at the Daily Show seem to think John McCain doesn't remember where he lives.
This all starts with with a reporter asking McCain how many houses does he own. For some reason McCain's response has been frothed over all day. Why no interest in why the reporter asked the question?
Well any amount of research shows McCain and his wife own property through a trust. That includes condominiums, McCain believed. In fact it's a very good bet that neither the candidate nor his wife knows exactly what, or how much of what, is currently owned.
Answer: they own way more than one house. What is the reporter really after?
Answer: a reponse from McCain to counteract the the charges of elitism that are crushing Obama's poll numbers? To remind people that McCain is wealthy and therefor worse than an elitist?
My real question is this: when the reporter's job is to try to provide sound bites for the Obama strategists, do we have any place other than the Daily Show doing any real reporting?