Mr. President, please grow a pair

During the past two weeks, the apparent war between the White House and Fox News has become more than just a minor blip on the political radar, but a major story. Each day there are numerous articles, from multiple news sources - CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Bloomberg, the Huffington Post and just about every newspaper and blog imaginable. Some will claim this whole debate is a waste of time, which might be true. This is why it's important to remember who it was who forced us to have this debate to begin with: White House officials.

This whole spectacle began a few weeks ago when White House officials called out Glenn Beck for confusing the facts on the Olympics, and since has turned into a back-and-forth cat fight, with three senior advisers to Barack Obama calling Fox News "illegitimate" and calling on other news outlets to no longer treat Fox as legitimate journalism. Since then, Robert Gibbs has pointed to Beck and Sean Hannity as the real problems with Fox.

Now it's obvious that White House officials and Fox have never had a great relationship, but what has happened recently is something that has not been seen since Richard Nixon was in office. It's pretty funny, and sad at the same time, that the Obama administration feels so threatened by Fox News. After all, as the president's approval ratings have been falling, Fox News' ratings have been climbing, and it now attracts more viewers than all the other cable news networks combined, so maybe it is something to fear.

This has forced the administration to realize that its policies are not flying in mainstream America. With Fox as its most vocal opponent, it figures that by forcing the country to re-examine Fox, people will see the light and go crawling back into the arms of Obama. Unfortunately, this debate has fired up the right even more than it already was. By claiming Fox News is illegitimate, do the people watching it have illegitimate concerns? Furthermore, if Beck and Hannity are reasonable enough to claim Fox is illegitimate, shouldn't Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow be enough to make MSNBC illegitimate? No, because MSNBC doesn't criticize the administration at all.

Unfortunately for White House officials, this is yet another issue to blow up in their faces. Once again, Obama has shown his willingness to get sidetracked on trivial, stupid matters. Just like the professor Gates situation, and flying to Europe to petition for the Olympics, Obama is wasting critical time when decisions have to be made.

That there is no strategy for Afghanistan, yet Obama and his administration feel they can waste time on TV talking about Fox, is something that worries me, and should worry you. Obviously, Fox has a certain bias; the only people who don't think so are those with Fox itself. But, people who want to watch Hannity and Beck are going to do so, regardless of what the administration says.

By getting involved, the administration is showing it's willing to get involved in the media. Whether it be to regulate, there is no place for government interference with the media. That Fox's ratings are growing every day means concerns about taxes, deficit and government intervention are real and spreading.

Rather than wasting time attacking people who share different views, White House officials should address these issues and prove them to be false. Beck frequently points to the government's ever-growing role in our lives. By its willingness to take a position in the media, the administration has only shown these allegations to be all the more true.

Imagine if George W. Bush made a fuss every time he was treated unfairly by a news organization. He probably would've been impeached for violating the Constitution. Obama won't be able to change the views of Hannity or Beck; but that doesn't matter because they aren't journalists, nor do they claim to be. They are entertainers who get high ratings by saying ridiculous things, so the best way to deal with them is to ignore them.

As the president, Obama's duty is to rise above these entertainers and other negative press, and focus on doing his job. If Bush could put up with multiple networks calling him names for eight years, Obama can handle it from one network.

I hope the American public will soon realize that once again a distraction has been created for it. But before we move past this, as we had to do with the Professor Gates fiasco, who keeps bringing these ludicrous things into the public eye? Not Fox News, but Obama. If he is so focused on having a meaningful debate on the issues, why is he saying his opposition is illegitimate and why is he wasting precious time debating things that don't matter?

If this is how the administration reacts when it is afraid, or in the face of someone who opposes it, I am afraid to think about how it will handle a real crisis or emergency. Will it go on different channels and complain that someone is being unfair or work toward proving its critics wrong? I guess only time will tell.