Comment Elsewhere: Fighting Fire with Laughter

In response to concern about whether Alan Grayson's tone versus Sarah Palin was too caustic to be helpful, I said:

I’m ambivalent about this, honestly. There are times when a bully has to be stopped, and stopped hard. Palin’s been rude, borderline racist, divisive, evasive and manipulative; she got lucky in her career, but she’s abused her position at every opportunity. She should never have been a national political figure, and she’s neither newsworthy nor noteworthy, but the press has no idea how to report on issues, so her attacks get transmitted through the media, repeated endlessly, forcing Democrats to finally respond or look feckless. It’s classic abuser behavior: pushing and pushing, then whining about ‘fairness’ when someone stands up to them.

The only way to get the press to stop taking her seriously, to defang her politically, is for Democrats to stop taking her seriously, and to make the press look foolish for bothering to follow, quote and enable her. Grayson’s rhetoric has a hard edge on it, to be sure, but it’s pretty mild compared to Santorum or Steve King, or Issa, or McConnell, or a half dozen other Republican Congressional flamethrowers I could name. And, unlike most of their incendiary allegations, Grayson’s comments are based on verifiable facts and reasonable inferences.