THIS MODERN WORLD

Fox has updated the article mentioned in this post to acknowledge that “Communists for Kerry” are, in fact, pranksters.

In a version of this article that was published earlier, the Communists for Kerry group was portrayed as an organization that was supporting John Kerry for president. FOXNews.com’s reporter asked the group’s representative several times whether the group was legitimate and supporting the Democratic candidate, and the spokesman insisted that it was. The Communists for Kerry group is, in fact, a parody organization.

Translation: we’re very, very gullible.

In other Fox news, Carl Cameron has been publicly named and chastised for posting that other fake story about Kerry. Doesn’t seem like enough to me — he certainly should be taken off the Kerry campaign, after having so clearly demonstrated his bias against Kerry…if not suspended or fired entirely. I mean, we wouldn’t want anyone to doubt the fairness and balance of the Fox News Network, would we?

Tom Friedman is back:

What I resent so much is that some of us actually put our personal politics aside in thinking about this war and about why it is so important to produce a different Iraq.

Translation: I was right to support the war, which should have gone well, but the Bushies screwed everything up. Blah blah blah. You hear this a lot from Sensible Liberals who furrowed their brows and thought things through and decided that they had no choice but to support the war in Iraq, what with the WMD’s and all — and nothing annoys me more. Well, that’s not true — having someone stand on my feet and shout “neener neener” in my ear in a screechy voice would annoy me more, and I’m sure there are other examples. But we’ll let it stand as a rhetorical device. The point is, the Sensible Liberals steadfastly refused to take into account what the rest of us understood to be obvious: of course the Bushies are going to screw this up. Look at who you’re dealing with. Halliburton Dick and the PNAC Posse — you think these people are going to get it done right? All that crap about being welcomed as liberators, rose petals thrown at our feet — it was obvious from the start that the people in charge of this thing were living in a policy wonk fantasy world. Add to this the fact that anyone with the slightest historical perspective should have been able to extrapolate from past experience and understand that the Law of Unintended Consequences often governs U.S. interventions — and, well, let’s just say I’m not terribly impressed with the Sensible Liberals who sensibly supported the war and now reluctantly must acknowledge that things have not gone as well as one might have hoped.

As you may have noticed, a few blogads have started popping up in the margins. I’ve got three categories of ads — one premium top-of-the-page spot in each column, and the normal ad strip on the right. (For some reason, only the left premium ad is showing up on the main Blogads page — I’m hoping they’ll get that straightened out soon…?)

My policy on advertising is mostly intuitive, and subject to constant revision, so nothing I say here should be set in stone. Nonetheless, my sense of it so far is that I don’t really think that I should accept ads from specific political candidates, though advocacy ads from MoveOn and the like are more than welcome. And while I’m going to try to keep things mostly site-appropriate, I should note that advertising here does not constitute an explicit endorsement from me.

Having said that, I do want to welcome this site’s charter advertisers and thank them for their support. Click through, check them out. The click-through stats show up on Blogads — help me demonstrate that advertising on this site attracts eyeballs.

Here:

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.

Trouble is, Communists for Kerry is a pretty obvious joke. And it’s not hard to find the Republicans behind it.

In all seriousness: what the hell is going on over at Fox these days?

(Big tip of the pen to Todd Miller.)

(…I see Atrios was on this hours ago…)

Or so Bush claimed to believe during last night’s debate. Wonder if he’s including these lives. (Warning: very disturbing images.)