While their rather strong obvious bias has earned Fox News the nickname of ‘Faux News’ for a while now, this past few days they seem to be doing an incredibly good job of living up to their nickname.
The first incident was Friday, when the following story appeared on the Fox News website:
Rallying supporters in Tampa Friday, Kerry played up his performance in Thursday night’s debate, in which many observers agreed the Massachusetts senator outperformed the president.
“Didn’t my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!” Kerry said Friday.
With the foreign-policy debate in the history books, Kerry hopes to keep the pressure on and the sense of traction going.
Aides say he will step up attacks on the president in the next few days, and pivot somewhat to the domestic agenda, with a focus on women and abortion rights.
“It’s about the Supreme Court. Women should like me! I do manicures,” Kerry said.
Kerry still trails in actual horse-race polls, but aides say his performance was strong enough to rally his base and further appeal to voters ready for a change.
“I’m metrosexual — he’s a cowboy,” the Democratic candidate said of himself and his opponent.
A “metrosexual” is defined as an urbane male with a strong aesthetic sense who spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle.
Josh Marshall of the Talking Points Memo picked up on this and started looking into it. Over the course of the day, the article was taken down, and then later replaced by an apology. Turns out the article was written by Fox News staffer covering the Kerry campaign, Carl Cameron.
Then, later that same day, one of Atrios’ readers picked up on a post-debate article on Fox News in which this appeared…
Of course, there were some Kerry supporters in attendance who had no doubts whatever about their candidate.
“We’re trying to get Comrade Kerry elected and get that capitalist enabler George Bush out of office,” said 17-year-old Komoselutes Rob of Communists for Kerry.
“Even though he, too, is a capitalist, he supports my socialist values more than President Bush,” Rob said, before assuring FOXNews.com that his organization was not a parody group. When asked his thoughts on Washington’s policy toward Communist holdout North Korea, Rob said: “The North Koreans are my comrades to a point, and I’m sure they support Comrade Kerry, too.”
It is unclear whether the Kerry campaign has welcomed the Communists’ endorsement.
The kicker is that when you visit the Communists for Kerry website and check their ‘About Us‘ page, you find this:
“Communists for Kerry” is a campaign of the Hellgate Republican Club, a tax exempt non-partisan public advocacy “527” organization that exists for the purpose of;
“Informing voters with satire and irony, how political candidates make decisions based on the failed social economic principles of socialism that punish the individual by preventing them from becoming their dream through proven ideas of entrepreneurship and freedom.”
Our members help elect candidates who support economic growth through Entrepreneurship, limited government and lower taxes. Communists For Kerry is separate and distinct from the Communist party of America and any of its organization. None of it’s members are members of any communist organizations.
The Fox article has since been updated to indicate that Communists for Kerry is a satirical orignization.
Does Faux News hold itself to any standards whatsoever?
“Don’t You Want Me (Hot Tracks)” by Human League from the album Edge, The Level 2 (1995, 6:52).