There Must Be A Joke In Here Somewhere...

Okay, friends, I need some help. There's this news item, and I think it's funny, I'm sure it's funny, I just can't quite figure it out.

Here's the deal: it was announced today-ish that PBS's conservative Journal Editorial Report will move to Fox News Channel next month. The Editorial Report features Wall Street Journal editors and reporters talking about the news, and it was created as a conservative counterpart to NOW with Bill Moyers, which is now just NOW, as the liberal Moyers retired in 2004.

The decision to take the Editorial Report to Fox appears to have come from the anger of Dow Jones (owners of the WSJ) at some of the major PBS markets' not carrying the show or airing it in the wee hours, and there's talk of the vast liberal public broadcasting conspiracy and whatnot. But Kenneth Tomlinson, the disgraced and resigned chairman of the Coporation for Public Broadcasting ended up so disgraced and resigned partly because he violated laws by dealing directly with the creators of the Editorial Report, and partly because he broke laws by threatening to withold funding if PBS programming didn't become more conservative and employing "political tests" in hiring decisions.

So there's your material. I don't exactly get what it is that's so strange about this to me - I guess it's that the Editorial Report exists thanks to the machinations of a criminal, and now they're blaming the organization he ran for their decision to leave because they're not getting enough love. But I know you folks have a high standard of humor, and that's just not going to cut it. So go to it! Make me laugh like Bert & Ernie in their homofied bathtub!