Salon watches FOX so you don't have to...a hilarious tale of election night!

[NYCGirl]

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2006/11/08/fox_election/index.html

-snipped-

Normal TV manners reasserted themselves, and before long Sen. John McCain came on the show, supposedly to talk about how the Republicans would land on their feet. Of course this is the new, improved McCain, a pod person hatched in some Karl Rove greenhouse who at some point in 2005 replaced the old tough-as-nails, indie-Republican model. I have long felt that I'd actually prefer McCain to Hillary Clinton in '08, but, jeez Louise, have you seen this guy lately? He sits there in a chair with all the lifelike vividness of Lenin's corpse, smiling in this ghastly, dead way and reading from a script, with no evident conviction or even awareness. I'm not positive his lips move. Sca-a-ry.

-snipped-

All night long, it had looked like George Allen was going to squeak it out in Virginia, and the Foxies were clinging to that apparent result. Bill Kristol kept wanting to call the race and then talking himself out of it, but he did repeatedly exclaim with boyish wonder over the fact that it might be Allen who saved the Republicans' bacon in the end. Hume got to tell his viewers, right before departing, that Allen's lead had finally evaporated, and that a recount, and possibly agonizing defeat, would come with the dawn.

By the next hour under Shep Smith, Fox had totally dropped the mode of lamentation and moved on to a new message: Let's end this partisan bickering and get stuff done! It's time for new ideas! Change! Competence! Like I said earlier, it's the message of those who just got a can of whup-ass opened all over them. (It looks like condensed cream of mushroom soup, but tastes even worse.)

"This is sort of a standard election," Kondracke said crossly in summing up. "There's always something in the sixth year , whether it's Watergate or Vietnam or a recession." Yeah, Mort. There's always something. Here's the something this year: That big plan for a permanent Republican majority? It crawled out into the Iraqi desert, rolled onto its bristly back and died.

[acmavm]

1. Since I don't and won't watch them I guess someone has to.

They are good comedy material sometimes, aren't they?

[myrna minx]

2. That was a pleasure to read.

LOL about McCain.

"He sits there in a chair with all the lifelike vividness of Lenin's corpse, smiling in this ghastly, dead way and reading from a script, with no evident conviction or even awareness. I'm not positive his lips move. Sca-a-ry."

[klook]

3. Yeah, and in Bush's press conference today

he was all "Let's work together in a bi-partisan fashion to get things done for the American people."

Sheeyit.

Now that they've gotten their asses handed to them, now they want to work together cooperatively! Like they give 2 shits about the American people or anything else except their own greed and right-wing ideology.

[BurtWorm]

4. A standard election!

Is that what he said in 1994?

[Tempest]

5. Hey! Wait a minute!

"veteran TV newsman who has been reduced to anchoring the weekend local news in Bakersfield"

What's wrong with Bakersfield?

Just because it's highly conservative and they still communicate in grunts, there's a few of us intelligent Liberals living here.

LOL!

[Patsy Stone]

6. Poor Brit. This race is going to a recount...

"Whether it was Malkin's outburst or those losses that threw him off, Hume lost all pretense of objectivity, and spent several minutes dolefully dwelling on a lone Republican hold in a close seat, the 13th Congressional District of Florida. He seemed terribly eager for analyst Michael Barone to tell him this was a harbinger of better things ahead, and not just a Proustian remembrance of glorious elections past."

U.S. House - District 13 | COUNTY RESULTS
Candidate Votes % of votes
Vern Buchanan (REP) 119,102 50%
Christine Jennings (DEM) 118,729 50%
100% of precincts reporting

[crispini]

7. Bwah! This is my favorite bit!

(snip)
At 11:23 EST, Fox put up a graphic showing a cherry-picked selection of the incoming House leadership. Predictably, they'd found a photo of Nancy Pelosi with a bad puffball hairdo and a weird gape-grin. Below the speaker-presumptive were a few likely chairs of major committees: Charles Rangel, Alcee Hastings, John Conyers and Henry Waxman. These people were variously described as highly liberal (Rangel and Conyers), ethically challenged (Hastings) and overly aggressive (Waxman). No one on the show observed that the folks in the picture were a woman, three black guys and a Jew. (At least not out loud.)

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

[NYCGirl]

8. (At least not out loud.) LOL! My fave, too. NT

[twilight_sailing]

12. too funny!

Thanks for that. I laughed until I stared choking and coughing.

[chemteacher]

20. "A woman, three black guys, and a Jew..."

You sound like James Watt!!!

[Ms. Clio]

9. this is so funny and so dead-on

k & r for a great read!

More:

Several of the panelists in Fox's circle of commentators, most notably Mort Kondracke, Fred Barnes and Juan Williams, seemed devoted to combing through the night's rubble and ashes in search of any blackened emblems of moral or symbolic victory. This tone was struck early, when reporter Major Garrett raised the idea that "all these conservative Democrats" riding into Congress on the great wave of 2006 might be, well, almost like Republicans, except that they belong to a different party. (Granted, many left-wing Democrats might make the same observation.)

This new crop of Democrats was "going to get to Washington, and they're going to see a bunch of liberals leading their party," Garrett intoned darkly. "It's going to be interesting to watch." One commentator (possibly Bill Kristol, though I'm not sure about that) floated the notion that conservative Democrats like Rep.-elect Heath Shuler, the former NFL quarterback from North Carolina, might not support Nancy Pelosi for the speakership. This meme floated in the air, wistfully, for a second -- might the GOP lose the election but then magically convert those new Democratic members into Republicans? -- and then was abandoned.

One-time right-wing hero Rick Santorum was the first Republican senator to fall, and beyond that first news bulletin his name was not mentioned during the five hours or so I watched of Fox's election coverage. Defeated Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine was barely mentioned either, although his victorious opponent, Rep. Sherrod Brown, was described by Hume, with evident distaste, as a "true-blue liberal" and an "out-and-out liberal." Some point was being made there, but since it seemed to contradict the running theme that only conservative Democrats were winning, it never became clear.

Barnes and Kondracke acted irritated by the whole evening, as if the historic electoral upheaval they were witnessing was essentially a routine event and anyway, dammit, if they didn't make their Georgetown dinner dates on time the merlot would all get drunk by other people (possibly Democrats). Barnes insisted that "there was no ideological component" to the GOP's ever-worsening defeat, and that the widely despised Iraq war was not an ideological issue. That sounds smart until you think about it. In plain English, I think that means: Absolutely everyone has finally grasped that the president is an idiot.

[longship]

10. Good read.

Nominated and :kick:ed

[Supersedeas]

19. Yep, seconded

[bullwinkle428]

11. I wish I'd recorded Fox's coverage last night, just to play back some

night when I'm in the mood for high comedy! I couldn't give up reality-based coverage to watch last night, but would love to look back, kind of nice little retrospective if you will, a regular "political-depression-lasagna" for those of who truly enjoy karmic payback!

[anakie]

13. I watched Fox for a couple of hours

mainly because I wanted that network to tell me that the Democrats had won the House. It was like they were presiding over a funeral. Mort, Fred, Bill, Brit - not a smile and hardly a good word about the results between them. I couldn't stop the smile on my face broadening - sometimes to out and out laughter.

Unfortuately for me we had a huge storm go through my area and we lost power for 7 hours just as they were about to call Missouri and with Montana looking good early.

CONGRATULATIONS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF AMERICA AND ALL HERE AT D.U. Keep fighting the good fight and move forward to 2008.

Peace

[NYCGirl]

14. KICK.

[Ignis]

15. Kick for a funny read! (nt)

[Marie26]

16. I watched them a bit

during the election. For some reason, they were less annoying than Candy Crowley & Chris Matthews. And the sight of all those sad-eyed Republicans made the victories even more satisfying.

[NYCGirl]

17. Afternoon kick.

[chat_noir]

18. LMAO!!

"it meant bringing in Michelle Malkin, looking as if she had showed up to fill out an application at the Hawaiian Tropic theme restaurant and sat down at the wrong desk."