Mr. President, you’re embarrassing the friendlies now.

There’s only one thing dumber than picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel — picking a fight with people who don’t even have to buy ink. The Obama administration’s war on Fox News is dumb on multiple levels. It makes the White House look weak, unable to take Harry Truman’s advice and just deal with the heat. It makes the White House look small, dragged down to the level of Glenn Beck. It makes the White House look childish and petty at best, and it has a distinct Nixonian — Agnewesque? — aroma at worst. It is a self-defeating trifecta: it distracts attention from the Obama administration’s substantive message; it serves to help Fox, not punish it, by driving up ratings; and it deprives the White House, to the extent it refuses to provide administration officials to appear on the cable network, of access to an audience that is, in fact, broader than hard-core Obama haters.

I’ve been making the Nixon comparison since WAY before he was elected. The thin-skinned paranoia similarities are stunning. Throw in the pettiness and they’re sci-fi twins from different eras.

The president said he isn’t losing any sleep over this tantrum of his and that’s understandable once you realize that he’s also not losing any sleep over Afghanistan, unemployment or the plight of small business people either.

Bet that Nobel speech is stressing his ass out, though.

Hey: priorities.

Sure, it’s legitimate — and standard practice — to dispense access and coveted interviews to favored reporters and news outlets. So is subtly doing the opposite: letting a reporter who’s filed a tough story know that he or she is in the doghouse by leaking a scoop to a competitor. The Bush administration routinely briefed conservative columnists before a big presidential speech; the Obama White House tends to call in ideological sympathizers. This is the way the game is played.

Where the White House has gone way overboard is in its decision to treat Fox as an outright enemy and to go public with the assault. Imagine the outcry if the Bush administration had pulled a similar hissy fit with MSNBC. “Opinion journalism masquerading as news,”

Exactly. Imagine if anyone other than President Free Pass was taking this leak on the First Amendment.

Imagine if any other administration was weighing in during the broadcasts of “news” outlets that have most of their questions fed to their anchors from a rectum.

Yes, imagine.

And if all that imagining doesn’t disturb you in the slightest, stay away from electricity and sharp things for a while.

But remain a registered Democrat. You’re exactly what they’re looking for.