At this year's National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama chided Republicans and Democrats to not contaminate our political discussions with smears and slander.  "Civility is not a sign of weakness," he said.  "At times, it seems like we are unable to listen to one another, to have at once a serious and civil debate. This erosion of civility in the public square sows division and cynicism among our citizens. It poisons the well of public opinion."

No word yet on whether the president choked on the thick irony that encrusted those hollow words as they poured from his lips.

In Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter's new book, "The Promise, President Obama, Year One," it is revealed that Mr. Civility decided to do a little poisoning of that well himself as he slandered millions of Americans who are fed up with his big-government approach.  Discussing the unanimous opposition Republicans mounted to his now-failed stimulus plan, Obama mocked how, "That helped to create the tea-baggers."  Perhaps referring to your fellow countrymen by using vile terminology like "tea-bagging" - an outrageously offensive term that describes a sex act - is Mr. Obama's idea of "serious and civil debate?"

Imagine if you will, the furor that would have erupted if President George W. Bush had used an equally offensive term, the "n-word," to describe his political opponents at the NAACP.  Or what if Bush had used slang terminology to refer to his political opponents within the homosexual lobby?  As media critic Brent Bozell pointed out, "if President George W. Bush had slurred the gay rights movement during his presidency, it would have immediately dominated the news of every single national media outlet."

He's right.  And such criticism would have been completely warranted.  Demeaning and slandering fellow citizens (even those you disagree with politically) is unproductive, childish and certainly beneath the dignity of the office of President of the United States.

Yet, this practice of sowing division and discord while simultaneously condemning the sowing of division and discord has become the Obama way.  It was reflected in his inaugural address when he heroically decreed, "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances...that for far too long have strangled our politics."

This shortly after he had scoffed at the bitter Pennsylvanians who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."  No petty grievances there.

Or take his recent speech to the University of Michigan class of 2010 where he counseled, "If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we will become more polarized, more set in our ways.  But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from."

This said following his first year and a half in office in which he attempted to shun an entire news agency because they dared question him, demonized Rush Limbaugh, attempted to cut Fox News from the White House press pool, and had members of his staff orchestrating boycotts against cultural commentators who oppose his policies.  Is this what "seeking out information that challenges our assumptions" means?

Of course, no one in the mainstream press seems interested in pointing out this duplicity.  And why should they?  These modern prophets of one-way tolerance seem to enjoy using offensive slang like "tea-bagging" as much as their fearless leader.  Demonstrating the pathetic state of journalistic integrity in the old media, consider that CBS's Mark Knoller, PBS's Gwen Ifill, CNN's Katrina Vanden Heuval, Suzanne Malveaux, Candy Crowley and Anderson Cooper, MSNBC's David Shuster, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, and ABC's George Stephanopoulos have all used that disgusting epithet to describe conservative Americans.

At the prayer breakfast, Obama lamented, "We become absorbed with our abstract arguments, our ideological disputes, our contests for power. And in this Tower of Babel, we lose the sound of God's voice."  If the president truly seeks to encourage Americans to find their inner angels, my humble suggestion would be for him to try leading by example.

But if, as I suspect, this rhetoric is meant only to perpetuate the myth of Obama as post-partisan healer, while he insults and defames those who get in his way, I have but one message for him: stay classy, Mr. President.