FOX "News," Your Agenda is Showing. . .

I can no longer bear to watch all of the Sunday political talk shows. Pre-election, it was a ritual for me to watch one or two as they aired, and one or two more on the DVR. Now? It's almost torturous. Either you've got Meet the Press interviewing an Obama person (this week, it was Larry Summers) who have a particularly annoying way of non-answering. Usually this means repeating "the President has been very clear. . ." endlessly until David Gregory stops asking the question they're evading. But at least MTP is a show that is performing the service these shows purport to: questioning the administration in power, in an effort to keep them honest. I'm not saying they're doing it well, but whattayagonnado.

FOX "News" Sunday is much more clear in their agenda. Usually, they have on a critic of the Obama Administration (this week it was Michael Hayden, Bush's CIA Director), in an effort to accuse the administration of not being honest. This morning, Hayden (at Wallace's probing) said that torture works! And seemed to think Obama's releasing the details of the torture performed under George W. Bush was worse than the torture itself. Also, oddly, the structure of Chris Wallace's questions made it sound like Wallace himself is a proponent of torture. Which is ironic, because watching this program is torture.

Then (during a back and forth with always fey Lindsey Graham and Claire McCaskill) we had an "Obama trash-talks America" montage--completely absent of context. That segment is on as I type this, but I feel completely confident in typing: the ludicrously named "Power Panel" was lopsided in its rightward bias, Bill Kristol was wrong again, and the "Power Player of the Week" segment was once again entirely skippable. Why do I say this? Because every single installment of F"N"S is nearly identical in its last 30 minutes. I'll happily update this post if I'm wrong. Oh, the one difference will likely focus on the "spontaneous," "grass-roots," FOX-sponsored tea bagging tea parties.

UPDATE: I just watched the rest of the show, and I was right. Only Bill Kristol was wronger than usual. How the hell is releasing Bush's torture memos "disgraceful" and yet, Bush (and anyone involved in the torture) shouldn't be investigated? What?