DID PAUL BEGALA Punk The Post? “The news that Begala helped cook up this attack last October and has secretly been tasked with carrying out should embarrass the Post a little for using him in this piece. It certainly puts a different spin on the story. It also places the responsibility for the personal attacks on Rush and his earlier addiction to painkillers squarely on Barack Obama’s shoulders. This is his operation, and Begala’s his errand boy here.”

UPDATE: More: “Imagine, for a moment, if George Bush and his chief of staff had made coordinated and concerted attacks on Michael Moore, and suggested that the colorful left-wing fulminator — not Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid — was the “true intellectual force” behind the Democratic party. Imagine the howls of protest. And, undoubtedly, the media would have focused on the propriety of a commander-in-chief and his advisers wasting time and political breath on an entertainer. And yet we have President Obama and his hammer, Rahm Emanuel, doing just that in a time of war and economic crisis, and the story is about… Republicans!”

This is why people aren’t as sad about media shutdowns and layoffs as they might be, if the press actually reported things the way it claims to, instead of the way it does. And you can bet that if the chicken-suit thing happens, it won’t get covered much. ‘Cause, you know, it’s not really news when an entertainer picks fights with the President . . . .