Rachel Sklar body-checks the hockey mom; man up, Gov. Palin!

Leave it to a Canadian to give a pep talk to a bunch of Americans who are being browbeaten by the John McCain campaign.

Rachel Sklar, the lovely and talented correspondent for Huffington Post dot com, author of its "Eat the Press" column and someone who always seems to be at the right place at the right time -- as I write this she is twittering from a Twilight Zone breakfast in St. Paul in which Karl Rove is trying to shoot down the idea that Sarah Palin should ever sit for an interview with anyone -- our Nanette of the North has written the ultimate pushback piece to the McCain camp regarding its absurd, defensive and inevitably futile attacks on the media.

The piece, "Buck Up, Media. If You're The Enemy, You're Finally Doing Something Right," should be read and then forwarded to 20 friends. My favorite passage:

Here's a little newsflash for Sarah Palin, to paraphrase her speech: The media isn't writing about you to seek your good opinion — they're writing about you to serve the people of this country. Americans expect the media to investigate their candidates for office for the right reasons, not just to get the right access. If you really want to serve the people — as opposed to just your party, or yourself — then you'll do well to remember that.

There's also something fitting about a Canadian woman skating up alongside the hockey mom governor and delivering the media's first major body check. Something tells me it won't be the last. (Jim Kuhnhenn's AP fact-check of the governor's speech is pretty chippy, too.)