Who Does FOX "News" Think It's Kidding?

I've had a monkey on my back the last two mornings: Minesweeper. I don't know what made me dust off that old Microsoft game, but after quickly beating the beginner and intermediate levels, I got obsessed with--and was a dismal failure at--beating the advanced game. I played game after game, unable to beat it for hours. I finally did today--having a 50% shot of finding the last bomb in the last two squares, and guessing correctly.

But much of this time was spent with FOX "News" playing on my office TV. Why? Oh, I don't know. Mostly because while I don't want to get engaged with a TV program while I'm on my computer, I like a little noise in the background. And what's noisier than FOX? But some of the noise seeps in.

First, I'll mention that FOX "News" seems to use the weekend--Saturday in particular--as a training ground for their third-stringers. Terrible, dismal reporters, going on for several interviews saying largely nothing. Their voices remind me of the classic Saturday Night Live news parodies with Laraine Newman as a bad news reporter. I remember her dramatic line readings about "Smokey. THE bear."

Punctuating the utter piffle was a renewed focus by FOX on their tired old slogan "Fair and Balanced." They're hitting it hard again, after letting it go for a while. And it's simply ridiculous, and everybody with a brain knows it. As recently as a couple of days ago, for example, when liberal radio host Randi Rhodes got into trouble, they hauled out Ann Coulter to talk about it, and no counterpoint other than tepid Alan Colmes.

Repeating the phrase over and over doesn't make it come true. Alleging that "the rest" of the media is left-leaning, and therefore, FOX is "balance" is no truer. It is familiar though. We've heard "left-wing media bias" so many times, it has become conventional wisdom even though it is false (or at least heavily exaggerated). I can name one show on cable news (Countdown with Keith Olbermann), a couple on Comedy Central (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report), and one on HBO (Real Time with Bill Maher) that display an obvious liberal bias. Where are the rest? Say what you will about ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC; outside of the shows I mentioned, none of the networks and cable channels display a liberal media bias even close to the right-wing cheerleading of FOX "News." Fair and Balanced my eye.

Oh, and Chris Wallace's "Obamawatch" is as stupid as calling the FOX "News" Sunday pundits "The Power Panel," or assuming anybody cares who their "Power Player of the Week" is. And that's pretty stupid.