The Red Eye

Get your minds out of the gutter!

So I was up late last night and flipping through channels when I saw a pretty girl's face on some talking heads panel show and stopped to see what it was.

Now, I liked FOX News Channel (FNC) when it first came out. My folks are the news channel-type people; if there isn't a specific program on they want to watch, the TV is tuned to a news channel, news program, newsmagazine, etc. They're also pretty Conservative in their political views, but this FNC wasn't really a partisan network when it very first came out - at least not to the extent that it later became.

Whether or not people want to admit it, the majority of American news outlets really are Liberal in their views and slant their pieces and shows to make their points. It can be very subtle - after all, they don't have to "spin" stories to make their point or push their political agenda - they can simply choose not to run stories, which means you'll never hear about that story, you'll never be exposed to that issue, and when you do hear about it, it will be from a decidedly partisan outlet, which makes it easy to discredit.

FNC covered a lot of these stories and actually did so fairly for a few months, but the minute this got out and more and more cable networks began picking it up and adding it to their basic package, the "word on the street" was that FNC was "the Conservative, or Republican, news network" and the execs and producers - ever the opportunists - seized on this and ran with it, all the way to the Right. It got so bad that, for at least the last few years, I haven't been able to watch it; the partisan politics became just as bad to the other extreme as the other news outlets' had been before.

But it did have a chilling effect across the board, forcing openly and strongly Left-wing-biased news outlets to start taking a more middle-of-the-road approach. Recently, FNC has cleaned up their act a little, too.

But I stopped because the girl was cute.

It was a show called, Red Eye, and it has a panel of guests - political, celebrity, comedic - who tackle the issues of the day. Most of the "issues" they tackle are "weird news," entertainment, and so forth, but it was really funny! Unlike The View or some of the other programs on the news networks (including most of those on FNC), it wasn't a bunch of arguing soccer moms and stuffed-shirts. The guests were light, witty, funny, and it was just a fun, silly alternative news-type show that I highly recommend.

And if you're just completely anti-FNC, they read an e-mail last night where one writer called it "the most unprofessional show on Fox News" and demanded it be canceled immediately. Heh. Oh, and the cute girl was a Democratic strategist - and she was truly the funniest of them all!

Why? What did you think this post was going to be about?