Fox and Hound

Roger Ailes has gone and done it now.

During a speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Foundations First Amendment Dinner (what a name!), the president of Fox News jokingly made the following comment: "It's true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said 'Why can't we catch this guy?"

You shouldn't have done that, Roger. Then again, you shouldn't have let Ann Coulter come on your programs and tell the American people that it is fun to denegrate homosexuals, or that its okay to integrate partisanship and bigotry. Come to think of it, you shouldn't have used your broadcasts to widely proclaim that Senator Barack Obama was indoctrinated in radical islamic thought at a madrasah when he was a boy.

You shouldn't have done these things, Roger, because this is not the role of journalism in a modern democracy. Journalists are not supposed to entertain homophobes and xenophobes like you. Journalists are not supposed to advance partisan agendas through misinformation and slander. Journalists are supposed to report the news.

In response to the idiotic comparison Roger Ailes made between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden, the democratic party of the state of Nevada has officially withdrawn from a presidential debate that was to be hosted by the Fox News Network. Good for them, although I wonder why they ever considered attending the event to begin with.

On a larger scale, a full scale popular movement against the Fox News Network has commenced. One website dedicated to the ruin of Fox News, www.foxattacks.com, allows users to upload information about local companies that advertise on Fox News to their server. The website is currently compiling a list of companies that advertise on Fox News and will be providing the list to activists who wish to contact those advertisers and express their disapproval.

Roger Ailes and Fox News may care about partisanship and slander, but their advertisers do not.

Alas, I digress. Go ahead, Roger, do whatever you want. Give criminals like Oliver North and Tom Delay all the airtime they can pollute. Keep dismissing the evidence that supports the theory of global warming as liberal poppycock. Keep reminding America that real journalists are responsible for the tragedy in Iraq.

Keep it up, because one day soon your little "newscasts" are going to be late night rerun material on comedy central. One day, we are going to look back through the annals of bad television and get one hell of a laugh out of you and your network.