Four Democrats Walk into a Bar . .

And even though one of them is not a very good Democrat, she is the only one who does not view Team Obama's recent Fox News-bashing as mystifying, ill-considered -- and strategically speaking, very bad indeed.

The consensus among my companions, as on all the Sunday talk shows and in Washington as a whole, is that sending advisers out to challenge whether Fox is a "real,'' legit news operation has made the president look churlish, weak and distracted from Afghanistan and the caca economy. Doesn't he know that he's only elevating Fox at his own expense? (At this point, I'm guessing he's heard.)

My own reaction, on the other hand, was: Finally! And: How about saying some more true things, now that you're on such a roll?

On ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, former Clinton chief-of-staff John Podesta described the attacks on Fox as a rare moment of giddy, "let the chips fall'' truth-telling from the White House: "[I]t seems to me they were overcome with that feeling of joy you get from telling the truth once in a while.'' (That "once in a while'' perhaps being a case in point?)

More likely, it was a bone tossed in the direction of those of us who wish the president would govern at least a little more like a one-termer, instead of worrying so excessively about winning a second four years that he might as well not have had the first.

With progressives impatient on multiple fronts, what's easier to deliver than health care reform? Why, Bill Shein's head on a platter. (Shein is Fox vice president who described his network this way: "We are the opposition.") What's a no-brainer compared to a decision on Afghanistan? I dunno, a war on the people who bring us the annual war on Christmas?

What White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said on Howie Kurtz's "Reliable Sources" on CNN is that "If we went back a year ago to the fall of 2008, to the campaign, that was a time this country was in two wars, that we had a financial collapse probably more significant than any financial collapse since the Great Depression. If you were a Fox News viewer in the fall election, what you would have seen were that the biggest stories and the biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and a something called ACORN."

On ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," presidential adviser David Axelrod chimed in that "the only argument Anita was making is that they're not really a news station if you watch even -- it's not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming.

"It's really not news -- it's pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we're not going to treat them that way. We're going to appear on their shows. We're going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view." Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel repeated that message on CNN's "State of the Union," saying Fox is "not a news organization so much as it has a perspective."

I won't argue for the strategic soundness of the plan, but I do think I know who he was trying to impress, and it wasn't Glenn Beck fans. Nor do I believe he was raising the equivalent of "reasonable doubt" among less committed viewers; if Mr. "I keep it cool," has been "pushed over the brink" and is venting, it's not out of pique, but with a purpose in mind. Going after Fox News must have seemed like a sure-fire way to appeal to his own restive base. Which is not to say it didn't come with a cost.