Fair and Balanced

First let me say, I am a conservative minded person who voted for his first D in the last presidential election because I could not believe the R's picked Sarah Palin -- among other foibles. Even though the fundamentals of my politics are more in line with the Wall Street Journal, I like the style of the New York Times much better and always look forward to the Sunday edition. Years ago when I started reading the New York Times I thought I was doing so to better understand the other team's perspective. Now I find the R's tactics so nauseating that I can barely make it through the WSJ opinion page in one sitting.

OK. On to the point of this posting. There is a front page piece in the NY Times today by David Carr and Tim Arango on Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News. There must have been at least one person in the NY Times news room that wanted to paint Ailes as the man behind the Custer Hill Club. Those of you that are not Nelson DeMille fans should know that the brains and money behind the Custer Hill Club in DeMille's 2006 novel, Wildfire, considered himself such a true patriot that he felt a plan to detonate nukes in two American cities was a small price to pay provided it caused the White House to nuke 128 Arab targets in the post 9/11 version of mutually assured destruction. The charred wreckage in the wake of Fox News is not as measurable with a Geiger counter, but it is measurable.

To the credit of the New York Times however, the article is well done, and carries no discernible bias. In fact the article points out some left leaning tendencies in the Murdoch family -- including possibly Rupert himself -- that most readers would not have known about. Well done New York Times. Maybe Fox News will reciprocate with some fair and balanced reporting of their own.