When even FOX knows it's bullshit...

This morning, as I planned my day and drank my coffee and lamented the fact that, just a few scant months ago, I would be enjoying my third or fourth cigarette of the day (damn you, allergies!), I decided I hated myself enough to watch FOX news. Every other news network was torn between coverage of the impending Rita or the Jet Blue "Gosh, We're Happy This Wasn't An Accident, But If It Had Been An Accident Or The Pilot Hadn't Been So Darn Competent, Then Our Incessant Coverage Of It Would Make More Sense" thing. FOX was carrying Bush's comments on...well, on whatever the hell it is he feels the need to comment on currently. Basically, how "good" we're doing in Iraq.

Again, I no longer smoke and this has created such a depressing void in my life that I'm even willing to fill it with Bush's speechmaking. I should just go back to smoking. I mean, lung cancer can't be that bad in comparison.

Anyway, I was struck that, as G-Dub rambled through how the capture of some terrorists in Iraq by his "coalition," a word I'm sure Webster's is redefining to include voices in one's head, FOX chose to display a huge graphic of Hurricane Rita on screen. Indeed, the graphic made Rita almost as big as G-Dub, giving the impression that he was being stalked by a giant, red gin blossom from his past.

Now, ostensibly, this is meaningless. On any other network I would tend to ignore it. However, when the staunch bastion of Fair and Balanced right-wing reporting gives Mother Nature and G-Dub equal billing, well, I am forced to take notice. This almost qualifies as criticism. To add insult to injury, as soon as G-Dub finished his prepared comments, the reporters peppered him with questions about Rita instead of about Iraq. The first question I caught concerned how Rita's affect on coastal areas would be different from Katrina's. After a moment of puzzlement, which on anyone else would imply they were actually considering the next thing they would say, but on him just means he's trying to remember if Rita is a hurricane or yet another one of Jenna's drinking buddies, he blurted out something to the effect of, "Well, I think people understand better the need to evacuate those areas."

It's not that he said that. It's true, in essence, and substantially better than the foot-in-mouth disease his mammy seems to have developed in her withering years. It's the way he said it. He made it a joke. Given, he always has that supercilious smirk when he talks, like he's trying to talk down to the world. Usually, it's either laughable or confusing, because an idiot trying to talk down to someone is, by turns, funny and incomprehensible. The smirk, however, coupled with his obvious lack of preparation regarding the topic and the hideous little chuckle-like noise he made as if to say, "What me worry, they're only poor niggers," made me throw my coffee at the television set. I was in a hotel room at the time, so that may appear on my credit card later, but I did honestly try to clean up.

As I sat there shaking with barely concealed rage and less caffeine than I'm used to, a reporter asked a question about Iraq. FOX surprised me yet again, although this time it was even more subtle. As G-Dumb prattled on about how well we were cutting into the terrorist network in Iraq and worldwide and how we were preserving freedom and safety for America and the rest of the world, their bottom scroll was running a blurb about a roadside bomb killing yet another American soldier. While I'm uncertain how hard it is to synch up those bottom tickers with stuff happening in the main window, even if it was completely unintentional, it was an excellent offset.

Of course, this is all just implied and completely subjective. Still, it's interesting to think that maybe even FOX knows you should cancel a show that's in bad taste.