Friday, July 03, 2009

More "liberal" balance at Fox News

I saw Juan Williams hosting the O'Reilly Factor the other day, reading off the Republican spin on the news just like you'd expect any other guest host to do. I didn't feel like bothering posting about it though. But since John Amato saved me the trouble, I'll just link to him.

Bill O'Reilly never has liberals fill in for him when he takes a vacation, so I was surprised to see Juan Williams in the anchor chair Wednesday night. And then I asked myself: Self, why am I surprised? Williams is BillO's chief apologist night in and night out and he would make a good little conservative talk show host in a pickle. And he did. Well, there were none of the Talking Points Memo segment that opens up The Factor every night because they probably didn't trust Juan to deliver them with the proper hateful spin, but he easily tried to do a BillO imitation the rest of the show.

It was quite hilarious listening to him stiffly yell about taxes being raised by the evil Obamanites. And then came Bernie Goldberg. They were both so appalled that CBS' Scott Pelley wouldn't invite any global warming deniers on his Global Warming special. Juan said: Not a single one. The horror, I say.
In fairness to Mr. Williams, it should be noted that it's usual for the guest hosts not to do a Talking Points segment. The only exceptions that I know of are Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham, who were allowed to do one everytime they hosted, as far as I can remember. (Now that I type this out, I'm not sure it contradicts what Mr. Amato has posited, however.)

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