Remember when it was considered a direct assault on American democracy for a president to answer a reporter’s question if his tone rubbed the media the wrong way? What a difference a change in administrations can make, so long as the new one is headed by Democrats.

With Joe Biden in the White House, it’s apparently barely worth a murmur when his press secretary says out loud that a well-known journalist questions her like “a stupid son of a b—–.”

Jen Psaki actually said that Thursday evening during a live-audience recording of a liberal podcast. Referring to Peter Doocy of Fox News, she said, “He works for a network that provides people with questions that, nothing personal to any individual including Peter Doocy, but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch.”

If it weren’t for the media melting down every time former President Donald Trump or one of his spokesmen cracked a joke or mocked a reporter, Psaki’s remark might just be taken as a lame ribbing. But there’s also the wildly inappropriate dealings she engaged in with NBC to get her own show as soon as she leaves the White House — a deal she reportedly locked in even as she’s been working as the Biden administration’s top spokesperson.

In effect, NBC’s news division (yes, it still has one of those, in theory) and MSNBC have been actively covering a senior White House official who the reporters know is their soon-to-be colleague.

If we found out that Sarah Sanders or Kayleigh McEnany had been in talks with Fox News for even just contributor roles while they were still working in the Trump White House, we would have never heard the end of it as an earth-shattering scandal.

Joe Scarborough, Don Lemon and every columnist at The New York Times would be in raging fits.

Corruption! Assault on democracy! Fox is Trump’s propaganda arm!

To their semi-credit, a few journalists have offered some mild criticism of the Psaki affair. CNN’s Oliver Darcy last week called the current NBC-Psaki conflict “an awkward dynamic.” Insider.com’s Claire Atkinson said “there’s something very, very wrong” should Psaki go immediately from being White House press secretary to appearing on news programs where she will certainly continue to promote and defend her former boss. “This move seems too fast to me,” she said. (Though that was after Atkinson showered sweet compliments on Psaki, describing her as “very compelling television,” confessing that “I like listening to her” and admitting that “I think she’s very good at commanding the room.”)

And that’s about the extent of any problems the national media can find as far as that goes.

It feels so long ago that The Washington Post made a melodramatic show in adopting the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” slogan and CNN began running corny TV ads explaining that an apple was not a banana. They did it not because there were new, looming hazards to the country’s foundation or because government officials had never played loose with facts before. There was no threat to press freedoms or legitimacy.

No, the threat was to the national media’s chokehold on who gets to determine what’s important and in the public’s best interest. The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and all the rest of the mainstream media are far more comfortable when that power rests solely with them. It’s far easier for them to promote the candidates and political figures they like.

And they like the Biden administration. It doesn’t threaten their power. So when the president’s spokesperson uses profanity to mock a critical reporter, or when that same spokesperson lines up a lucrative news-media opportunity while she’s still working at the White House, eh, no big deal. They like Psaki, too.

Eddie Scarry is a columnist at The Federalist.