There are so many blonde women on the Fox News Channel that I ploughed through the channel's website to get the exact number. Thirty-five. It means that of the 53 women who appear regularly on air for Fox, an unnaturally large proportion - two-thirds - are blonde or near-blonde. Even the non-blondes on Fox News are unmistakably Fox News, because almost all come with the same chiselled chin-lines, big hair, radioactive lip gloss and glowing conservatism.

Fox News, the most profitable, most copied, most opinionated major news network in the world, has reinvented TV news by becoming Foxy News.

Michael Mucci illustration Credit:Michael Mucci

But this column is not about blondes, lip gloss or even glamour. It begins with the superficial because the superficial is important in this story, which is about the exercise of power. It is about the obliteration of the old lines - you could say the Botoxing - between news and opinion, objectivity and partisanship, celebrity and journalism, honesty and horse manure.

The narrative begins a year ago, January 20, 2009, the day Senator Barack Obama was inaugurated as President of the United States. On Wednesday, he celebrates his first anniversary as President. It will be a hard day. Fox News will attempt to make it harder.