In a blistering Journal op-ed today, What’s The Matter With Kansas? author and liberal political commentator Thomas Frank came down on the side of the White House in the seemingly never-ending Fox News/Obama battle. He dismissed Fox as indulging in “persecution fantasy.”

For all the talk about the White House squaring off against Fox News, it’s easy to forget that it is essentially the job of any White House Press Secretary to mitigate the media’s handling of the administration and “work the refs.” We’re seeing it now, but let’s remember that we’ve been here before, in the not so distant past, but on the other side of the aisle: President George W. Bush routinely called out NBC and MSNBC for blurring the line between “news” and “opinion.”

According to many pundits, one of the central goals of President Obama’s increasingly high-stakes war with Fox News is to galvanize his supporters on the left.

Well, you can check that box off: influential progressive PAC MoveOn.org is calling for all Democrats to stay off Fox for the rest of the year in support of Obama’s decision to do the same.

Mediaite called the showdown between Fox News and the Obama administration back in mid-August. Now that it’s officially here, heralded by an attack-dog performance by White House Communications Director Anita Dunn on Reliable Sources, what does it mean? And which side, if either, will ultimately come out on top? A roundup of pundit reactions from the blogosphere and beyond: