STOP THE PRESSES: Politician Talks Sense

Here's a slice of transcript from a town hall meeting held by Representative Barney Frank the other day on the proposed healthcare reforms:

QUESTIONER (holding a picture of Obama with a Hitler moustache): Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy, as Obama expressly has supported this policy? Why are you supporting it?

FRANK: When you ask me that question I am going to revert to my ethnic heritage and answer your question with a question. On what planet do you spend most of your time?

You want me to answer your question? As you stand there, with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the first amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.

Apparently the response of the audience was to cheer. As was mine, on reading this passage. It is surely past time that the supposedly rational members of our political institutions and our media stopped treating the craziest accusations and lies with deference and started describing them as what they actually are.