DougJ at Balloon Juice had a post last night about regretting not confronting Fareed Zakaria in a New York restaurant.  Unsurprisingly, and apparently by design, this drew a host of pearl-clutching comments from the tote bag crowd, along the lines of "we're better than that," and "we shouldn't be trying to intimidate the nice journalists like Zakaria."  These people remain willfully unaware that politics is a contact sport, and that elite opinion-makers are part of the political ecosystem, not floating majestically above it.  The few liberal elements of our society that remain did not get enacted through reasoned discussion, but through a combination of pressure, intimidation, and horse-swapping.  Refusal to engage in forceful behavior cedes the field to the other participants who understand how the game is played.