A familiar tactic is rearing its ugly head far too often these days.  Mockery aimed at stifling debate.

“One of the cleverest tricks is demonizing perfectly reasonable actions and opinions,” writes conservative author Andrew Klavan.

We’ve seen it so many times. Throughout the last 30 years, the mainstream press has trumpeted any inane comment by conservatives such as Dan Quayle, Gerald Ford or George W. Bush – proclaiming any idle misstatement as proof that right-wingers are idiots. A concerted effort is made to paint Ronald Reagan and both Presidents Bush as dolts and idiots. However, when Barack Obama, Al Gore or Joe Biden make similarly absurd comments, the media is silent. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert politely look he other way. David Letterman makes a nightly feature out of any misstatement by George W. Bush — but what about Obama’s inexplicable bowing to various monarchs — first King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, then the Emperor of Japan, then Norway’s king.

In fact, notes Daniel Kurtzman on the website About.com, “Letterman had wicked fun over the years mocking former President Bush in his recurring segment ‘Great Moments in Presidential Speeches.’ That wellspring of comedy may have dried up, but Letterman is now mocking Bush’s blunders once again with an amusing new segment comparing Obama and Bush: ‘Cool/Not Cool.'”

Remember the uproar in the press when Quayle misspelled the word “potato,” followed by the respectful silence when Obama said he had visited “all 57 states”?

Sarah Palin can’t misspeak about Paul Revere or write speech notes on her hand without reaping weeks of ridicule, however Joe Biden can defile the Oval Office by sarcastically speaking the “f-word” into an open microphone and the media politely looks the other way.

What is going on is nothing new. In the Bible, Psalm 1:1 promises us: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.” In other words, stay away from bad influences and don’t hang around  mockers.

Mockery is one of the media’s favorite tools. Just look at how one commentator treated Fox News host Glenn Beck’s rally a few months ago at the Lincoln Monument: “Beck isn’t talking about anything historical, since he is not politically astute or intellectually curious,” sneered an opinion piece in the liberal Internet commentary The Daily Beast. Beck on that particular day had attracted somewhere between 85,000 and 500,000 folks to a rally on the Washington, D.C., mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

In the politically correct world, absolutely nothing Beck says can be taken seriously. Anyone who dares defend him is held in suspicion. Rather than debate Beck’s assertions, he is mocked. But we’ve seen this before. Woe to anybody who defends Rush Limbaugh. For years, one could be putting one’s career on the line if they dared praise Margaret Thatcher or Reagan. Woe to the commentator who defends anything uttered by Joseph McCarthy or asserts that during the “Red Scare” days, the Soviets were really targeting America.

In The Daily Beast piece, Beck is pilloried in the most flagrantly intolerant of terms: “Beck is an entertainer, and he does his job with hambone energy. Beck is a fool in the manner of a court jester, a braniac with a pipe in-mouth, a lecturer- in-chief with chalk in hand, a handsome lad mugging to the camera as if he’d just dropped his own birthday cake in his lap.”

Consider if this was said about Obama. It would be denounced as hate speech.

“I think of him as Quasimodo Lite,” The Daily Beast continues, “a deaf bell-ringer swinging from the Notre Dame of Fox News, a man who is heroically delighted to be our slightly stooped ‘Pope of Fools,’ in this Festival of Fools.”

Just imagine if anyone had written this about Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. But a conservative can be called a fool and freak without repercussions.

Have Beck and Limbaugh earned their derision? After all, both are just as guilty of committing the same mockery. Sarcasm and derision are dramatic devices they use very effectively to build enormous audiences. However, look at the disproportionate media response. If one of MSNBC’s predictably hostile-to-the-right commentators makes an outrageous statement, they are given a free ride. Nobody takes Letterman to task.  Nor has Nancy Pelosi — even with her preposterous statements such as Congress should pass Obamacare, then read it later or more recently the revelations of the scores of companies in her district given waivers exempting them from Obamacare — gotten anything like the treatment afforded Sarah Palin.

Pundits have wielded mockery to try to make Sarah Palin appear to be incapable of anything. Since the first day that she appeared on the national stage, they launched a campaign of scorn unmatched in history. But we’ve seen it before with Clarence Thomas. Women and African-Americans aren’t supposed to be conservative. If they dare step across the politically correct line, they are vilified and demonized. Then, the pundits give their condescending approval to conservative figures who have supported just enough liberal tenets to be tolerable. Of course, such wishy-washy “conservatives” are easily defeatable.

Frankly, it should be a warning when the press, the media and academia fail to mock a leader.

If the politically correct bullies aren’t swarming in, their non-targets should be scrutinized very, very skeptically.