Fair And Balanced

It's a tired analogy, but only because it's so true - do you think that, if a reporter for NBC or CBS or ABC quit his or her job to sign on to work on a Democratic Presidential campaign, wouldn't that be a major, major story for the insaneosphere and the right-wing noise machine?

The word spreading all over Capitol Hill today is that longtime Fox senior congressional producer Jim Mills is leaving his booth on the House side to join the Fred Thompson quasi-campaign as spokesman. NBC has confirmed that Mills will join Thompson's organization effective August 20.

By the way, NBC simply reported this as news, and with a gushing, fellating tribute to "Millsy" thrown in besides. But let's understand what's happening here.

A longtime Fox News "journalist" is becoming the spokesman for a Presidential campaign. Tony Snow was an anchor, and he gave his opinions on Fox News Radio all the time; he made no secret of his conservatism. This is a "senior congressional producer," someone who by any normal journalistic practices would be something less than a partisan hack.

I think that's slightly significant. And couple it with this quote from Ann Coulter, which again commits the sin of telling the truth:

Ann Coulter's latest column claims that "New York cabbies' compliance rate on daily bathing" is less than 48 percent; dilates upon the reporting in the "Treason Times"; and reflects, "Fox News ought to buy a copy of Monday's Democrat debate on CNN to play over and over during the general election campaign," because the only people it could possibly convince to vote for a Democrat are "losers blogging from their mother's basements."

Now why ever would Fox care about electing Republicans, given that they're a news organization in the business of "fair and balanced"?

(To be clear, I don't think Fox News has much of an impact on the debate in this country, at least not anymore; I think that their audience is never much likely to vote anything other than straight Republican ticket anyway, and while the network feeds a lot of nonsense into their heads, I question whether that really does penetrate into the general public. I just think it's funny when their ideological slip shows, especially in the context of all the shrieking about the "liberal media".)