Long-time New York Times and Washington Post "objective" political reporter-turned-liberal columnist E.J. Dionne on Friday wrote he suspects Fox News chairman Roger Ailes "secretly admires the bloggers and other activists working to keep Democratic presidential candidates from debating on his cable network."

Baloney. If he's secretly admiring Democrats for anything, it's for showing they're thin-skinned spoiled brats who are used to having an army of Stephanopolice reinforcing their every talking point. He's admiring how the Democrats are only building the appeal of the network to an audience of people who are looking for someone who doesn't follow along with the suffocating liberal consensus that lamely claims the mantle of "objectivity" as it throws rose petals in front of the Obamas and Rodhams.

Dionne crowed: "What Ailes knows is that the campaign to block Fox from sponsoring Democratic debates is the most effective liberal push-back against the network that stars Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity since its debut on Oct. 7, 1996."

By refusing to debate on Fox News, Democrats are hoping to say to America, "not a real news network." But what they're saying to America is that they don't like anything but the Liberal Media Elite, that they'd like to hold their breath and turn blue because they don't like the uncomfortable fact that Fox News exists.

Would the Democrats have the gall to reject the debates on the entire Liberal Media Complex if the roles were reversed and the liberals had only one network that didn't hate their liberal guts? I  highly doubt it. Their Fox News gambit is a way of taunting conservatives that they dominate every other channel, like the Olbermann "Chris Wallace Is A Monkey" Channel.

Dionne concluded:

Tell me again: Why do Democrats have an obligation to participate in debates on Fox? I am an avid reader of conservative magazines such as National Review and the Weekly Standard. But if these two publications teamed up to sponsor a Democratic debate, would anyone accuse Edwards, Obama and Clinton of "blacklisting" if the candidates said, "no, thanks"?

Lame. If National Review and The Weekly Standard admitted as many liberals into its pages as Fox News puts on its airwaves, no one would recognize the magazines as conservative.

Dionne also failed to address how lame Democrats like John Edwards look for accepting Fox News debates without protest in 2004, and now bowing and scraping before leftist blog sites, or how lame Democrats like John Edwards (and Obama, and Rodham Clinton) look for saying no Fox debates, even as they have accepted invitations to be on Fox News in recent times. Oh, how principled they look to say "no debate," but try not to say "I accepted FNC's airtime a few months ago."

No one would accuse ABC, or CBS, or NBC of being liberal opinion journals like The New Republic or The American Prospect. Comparing TV networks to opinion journals is also lame because no self-respecting opinion journal would stuff its pages with Anna Nicole Smith speculation. (That goes for you, too, FNC.) As wrong as liberal opinion journals routinely are, they're each an oasis of substance compared to the political horse-race natterings on the network news.

So get off your high horse, Mr. Dionne. Recognize that conservative candidates feel forced to appear all over the Liberal Media Elite, even appear before liberal editorial boards of the Macaca-mangling Washington Post, as the cost of doing political business in today's America. They don't have the luxury of spurning one channel because they feel confident in the warm glow of an entire "news" apparatus dedicated to their ideological agenda.

Democrats don't look brilliant for boycotting Fox. They look....illiberal.

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center