There’s a lesson you learn quickly and profoundly growing up on a farm: if you want to catch a pig, you better be willing to get dirty.

That lesson runs counter to the media high-mindedness I read today after a Saturday night rally in Pennsylvania where President Donald Trump called journalist Chuck Todd a “sleepy son of a bitch.”

This compounded the confusion I already felt after President Trump had implied free-agent NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick was a “son of a bitch,” too.

Where I grew up in the mountains of Virginia, if you mentioned someone’s mother in a derogatory way, you’d better be ready for a fight. The same held true on the concrete courts where I played pick-up basketball games in the Boston Fens at the edge of Roxbury.

Stand above the fray, say the media. Be professional. Noblesse oblige. “When they go low, we go high.” Don’t return the insult.

That’ll show Trump.

Really?

Even though the playing field is unbelievably skewed—Trump’s a sitting president, after all—shouldn’t somebody stick up for the mothers of the world?

How about Kaepernick’s, the 19-year-old girl abandoned by her lover who had to give her son up for adoption?

How about Todd’s, the Jewish wife in an interfaith marriage who made sure her son studied the religion of her ancestors?

Shouldn’t somebody point out it’s vulgar and reprehensible for anyone—especially someone holding the highest public office in the land—to call these women bitches?

Who among us high-minded liberals thought a porn star would show us the way?

You bet I’m rooting for Stormy Daniels. (Yeah, you saw that one coming.) She’s not worried about getting herself a little dirty. (That one, too.)

Seriously—whatever her motives, Daniels isn’t taking Trump’s bullying lying down. (Last one, I promise.)

His eye bags always remind me of the pink Yorkshire shoats we raised on the farm.

Bigly.