Fairly Unbalanced

Joseph Goebbels

I don't tend to watch much television, we don't have one at home, preferring to peruse the usually more thorough print or online media. However televisions are sprouting up all over the place in my world, at the gas station now, the bank and wherever. Information overload for the stimuli starved masses. Got to have that input every second I guess.

I am back on a limited exercise routine at the gym and there are four tv's mounted above the treadmills. In my conservative town, Fox is the mainstay so I am subjected to a lot of partisan cheerleading for god, country and the republican party.

Now Fox claims that it is merely a counterweight to widespread liberal bias in the "mainstream media". With the total ceding of talk radio to the conservatives, I find this point debatable but that is an argument for another day. Dare I say, maybe people who know how to read tend to be smarter and more liberal, I don't know...

I do think that if Progressives had a house organ as shrill and partisan as Fox, the cries and groans from the right wing would reach to the outer planets. Fox will never dig into a story that can show conservatives in a bad light, and the network seems to do its best at shaping news to its own diabolical agenda.

Anyway, I was marching down the treadmill Sunday afternoon and I was subjected to an interview between the moderator of Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace (estranged son of Mike Wallace) and Senator's Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman, two spokesmen for their respective presidential candidates and also potential vice presidential picks. I will try to reconstruct the interview.

Wallace: Senator Lieberman, President Bush has been instrumental at pushing for the surge in Iraq, the greatest thing since indoor plumbing. Your candidate, John McCain, was a proponent for the surge. Why have the Republicans not gotten more credit for this?

Lieberman: Well I must say Barack Obama was back smoking fatties and shooting baskets at Cabrini Greens while my candidate was busy trying to save Western Civilization and mankind as we know it.

Wallace: Senator Bayh, why does your candidate hate America so much?

Bayh: Well Chris, let me explain..

Wallace: Sorry, not enough time... enough! Senator Lieberman, will you speak at the Republican Convention?

Lieberman: If I am asked, I will speak. I will explain why John McCain is the right candidate to lead the nation but I won't go to bash that lilly livered, communist schvartse Barack Obama, that would be beneath me. I just won't engage in those histrionics against a fellow democrat, even a terrorist muslim radical like Barack.

Wallace: By the way, Evan, does Obama still beat his wife?

Bayh: Why no, I mean yes, I mean...

Wallace: Well there you have it, a vote for Obama is a vote for a heretic wife beater not content with anything less than the downfall of western civilization - back to you guys in the bunker.

My memory may be slightly askew but it was the worst interview I have ever heard. Hume and Wallace are angry second rate journalists who have sold their soul for a few measly shekels. If we are lucky enough to elect Obama it will be interesting to see if Fox can operate from the outside looking in or will it even possibly morph into a more objective network?