“A very calm and understated manner.”

Got that? That’s the new standard for political debate; whatever you say in a calm and understated manner must not be alarming, and thus people must not act as if they are alarmed, no matter what it is.

This notion of an overblown reaction to understated remarks merely continues the stupid emphasis (by both left and right) on means rather than ends, form rather than substance, and the idiotic principle of proportionate response.

While administration flacks may not be going over-the-top in the way that Democrats at large, and especially the lunatic left, did over the last eight years, the velvet fist is the perfectly predictable result of adding “the Chicago Way” to the mix by electing as president a total unknown with exceptionally thin skin from the nation’s most politically corrupt city. How is it understated to say, as David Axelrod did last Sunday, that Fox News is not even a news organization and should not be treated as such by other news organizations? It’s just another way of saying that the single television news organization that doesn’t regularly suck the president’s dick must be shut out for that reason. Is it somehow less offensive or threatening because he said it calmly?