The one from late last week in which Pearlstein penned a surprisingly frank column about the health care 'debate,' and called the town hall mini-mob members “political terrorists,” and detailed the blatant lies Republicans were spread about Obama's health care push.

The column (“Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform”) raised lots of eyebrows and was widely cheered by liberals as being a rare example of a Beltway pundit who hit back hard and didn't hide behind a phony both-sides-do-it framework. Pearlstein clearly and unequivocally called out the right-wing misinformation and intimidation. And for that, he deserves credit.

But I thought there was a gaping hole in Pearlstein's otherwise excellent column, especially when reading passages like this [emphasis added]:

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

Who does Pearlstein have in mind when he refers to the “fellow-travelers”? I suspect it's members of the GOP Noise Machine, which has been amplifying the the health care attacks launched by Republican leaders. I suspect he's referring to Fox News, which in recent weeks has transformed itself into a misinformation clearing house on health care. My guess is that Pearlstein has people like Rush Limbaugh in mind, who's being doing his best to make sure listeners have no idea what today's health care reform is actually about, and instead simply unleash their hatred for the federal government.

I'm guessing that's who Pearlstein's referring to, but I don't know for sure because Pearlstein never spells it out. Because in his otherwise excellent and insightful column, Pearlstein never explains who the “fellow travelers” are and never once makes reference to any members of the right-wing media who have fueled today's “political terrorists.”

I'm sorry, but if “Republican leaders” waged “attacks” on health care reform and there wasn't an irresponsible GOP Noise Machine to propagate the attacks, nobody would care what the GOP thought, simply because most Republicans today, by being such a small minority in Congress, are essentially powerless to impact the legislative process. The Republicans' only true source of power is the hate and rampant misinformation spread by right-wing media.

In other words, the right-wing media are the story here. At least a big portion of it in terms of the health care 'debate.' Yet the Beltway press continues to look away and play nice and refuse to single out offenders for deserved ridicule. And people like Pearlstein write columns that seem to dance around the obvious; columns that refuse to call out the real villains in the misinformation movement.