Obama: Man Of La Mancha

It is difficult to determine whether members of this administration are sinister or simply juvenile, but one thing is clear; they are easily distracted by trivial things. With a war effort in Afghanistan spiraling out of control and a domestic economic debacle in progress, Obama and his officials have been sidetracked by a quixotic quest to silence a news organization critical of them.

White House communications director Anita Dunn last week said that Fox News was "opinion journalism masquerading as news." On Sunday Chris Wallace fired back, "We wanted to ask Dunn about her criticism, but, as they've done every week since August, the White House refused to make any administration officials available to 'FOX News Sunday' to talk about this or anything else."

The reason for Dunn's attack was retaliation for Fox News Sunday having the unmitigated audacity to fact-check another White House official, Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, over comments she made in August regarding the VHA's "death book". Dunn was astounded that a Sunday news show dared to fact-check an administration official, something she said "I've never seen a Sunday show do." That's probably just the way they like it, too. The rest of the Sunday shows apparently regurgitate dutifully whatever drivel the White House feeds them.

As a matter of fact, Anita Dunn recently admitted that the administration controls the media, saying in a video conference to the Dominican government, "Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control." Here is the video:

It must be awfully frustrating trying to take over a country when there is that one, pesky news outlet that just won't play along. The only other alternative is for the administration to remove the mask, step out of the shadows and declare that democracy is dead, but they would never dare do that. In the meantime, all that's left to do is tilt at windmills and dream the impossible dream.

Good for the country, but sad for liberals nonetheless. As the New York Times David Carr recently wrote, "The administration, by deploying official resources against a troublesome media organization, seems to have brought a knife to a gunfight."

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