Ah, Fox News. Are we surprised when the session ends with an FNC personality insulting everyone else in the room, and inciting a brief, but spirited shouting match? Oddly, no.

But then, every FNC session comes with the promise of contention, given FNC's not-so-implicit assertion that the rest of the media is, by contrast, unfair and unbalanced. But actually, FNC makes its biases extremely clear, particularly when it comes to its institutional distaste for Democratic nominee-designate Barack Obama. (see also: 'terrorist fist jab,' open yearning for his assassination, and etc.) And while it's fine for a news channel to have a bias, it's just a trifle grating to be accused of wielding a bias when FNC is actually the most spirited wielder of that same bias.

Last time around (in '06, if memory serves) news chief Roger Ailes was as in-your-face as expected. This time they show a more moderate face, a four-man panel with Chris Wallace, Karl Rove, Howard Wolfson and John Moody.

Rove, of course, was Pres. Bush's top political adviser, while Wolfson was a senior aide to Hillary Clinton and a self-described progressive. Wallace comes off on FNC as a voice of reason, e.g. the time he publicly scolded the hosts of "Fox & Friends" of engaging in two straight hours of "Obama bashing." Wolfson, who calls himself a life-long progressive, says his very presence is a testament to FNC's fairness and balancedness, and so on.

Wallace asked about scolding the "Fox and Friends" anchors for what they said about Obama, andnow the caricatures: "I think the fact that I felt free to go on Fox & Friends, and say what was on my mind, that there had been two hours of Obama bashing, and I'm still here today means that we are fair and balanced. I really don't think an MSNBC reporter could go on Olbermann's show and tell him to knock it off, and be here to talk to you guys.. . .hadn't heard about the caricatures..."my own feeling is that a news organization should run real photographs."

Moody, though, says "F&F" is edgy, humorous, not strictly news-oriented.

Someone asks Rove if he believes Obama is a Muslim, a Jihadist, or un-American.

Rove: "No."

What's more, he continues, it's bad for America and the process to even have this as part of the conversation. "I don't believe he's anti-American. I do believe he's got a liberal perspective that I don't share. And that a lot of Americans don't share."

Oh, but then things begin to get sideways when a questioner asks Rove a prickly question about why he's talking to a room full of tv critics when, maybe, he ought to be testifying under oath to the Congress, as per their repeated supboenas. Rove bats this away with a well-rehearsed riff on the longstanding disagreement between the Congress and the White House regarding executive privilege. And the gang accepts it, more or less, and that's that. Until Wallace re-opens the issue a few minutes later. And this is where things get very Foxian, and more than a little grating.

I'm going to paraphrase here, because it all happens quickly as the session is wrapping up. Wallace, raising his hand as another panelist finished answering an unrelated question, asserts that he thinks it's telling that reporters would grill Rove on his ducking the Congress's subpoena. Because, he continues, Rove is a Republican and the U.S. Congress is currently controlled by Democrats. Surely, he continues, if the tables where turned and James Carville were on the panel despite the efforts of a Republican Congress, we would NEVER ask him the same question. Let alone grill him so severely.

Cue the bellowing from the back of the room. Yes we bloody well WOULD ask him that, being its basic gist.

Wallace shrugs. Oh, really, he says. Huh. Okay, fine.

And that's that.

But that's not really that. Because that kind of hypothetical accusation is a familiar FNC tactic, and it seems like the very opposite of fair and balanced. Because it's formless and free of substance. And yet, it's also impossible to argue against, because a hypothetical obviously comes with no attendant facts.

It's the press conference equivalent of a terrorist fist jab. And it doesn't make FNC look like a serious news organization. Let alone fair and balanced.