“Fair and balanced”

Yesterday (Wednesday, March 26, 2008), two of the large wall-mounted plasma-babies in the gym at the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA, were playing the same program: live coverage of a speech by REPUBLICAN presidential candidate John McCain at the Foreign Affairs Council (WHATEVER) in Los Angeles.
The southern-most plasma-baby had FOX-News, and the middle plasma-baby CNN. (The northern-most plasma-baby has the Weather-Channel.)
All the plasma-babies are silent. If closed-captioning is available, that runs on the screen; which is all you get — no sound.
But McCain wasn’t closed-captioned — I guess only Democrats get closed-captioned; e.g. Hillary and Obama. I’ve endured this before.
So here I am silently blasting away on the exercise bicycle, and McCain is silently yammering.
You can tell when he’s standing for applause. He goes speechless, and mouths “thank you; thank you,” firmly gripping the lectern.
FOX and CNN weren’t sharing the camera; each had a slightly different angle — and FOX was running slightly ahead of CNN.
So you couldn’t tell what McCain was saying — except both networks were running synopses of the speech below McCain.
FOX seemed biased; e.g. “McCain is the only presidential timber;” “McCain will be our Maximum Leader;” “the onliest respectable Commander-in-Chief.”
CNN seemed more on the beam: “we need NATO;” “if we leave Iraq and Afghanistan it will be our greatest security defeat;” “I know war and the damage it can cause.”

I’m exaggerating FOX, but the synopses seemed along this line.
“Seems pretty apt,” Linda said. “I had to endure FOX reportage of a Hillary speech the other day on the Y plasma-baby.”
“I hate Hillary, but FOX was off the deep-end. You could tell they hated Hillary. Their reportage was hardly ‘fair-and-balanced.’ It was anti-Hillary.”
Similar to the e-mail I was forwarded the other day — about Hillary stealing White House china. “Bill Clinton was the only convicted felon to ever be president. His wife shouldn’t even think of being president.”
The Clintsky felony count was for long ago not reporting for military duty. —Kind of like Dubya enlisting in the National Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam; or Cheney claiming he had more important things to do beside combat.
They shoulda lassoed him to shoot down that rogue satellite. (“Piece a’ cake!”)

I’m surprised FOX can even favor McCain — he sure ain’t the darling of Limberger and his lackeys. —And abhorrent as she is, Hillary is the onliest one that can beat down Limberger.

“Plasma-babies” are what my loudmouthed macho brother-in-Boston calls all high-definition wide/flat-screen TVs. Other technologies beside plasma are available, but he calls them all “plasma-babies.”

“Linda” is my wife of 40+ years.

“Dubya” is George W. Bush, our current president.

“Limberger” is Rush Limbaugh. I call him that because I think he stinks.