



After Diane Sawyer’s incessantly giddy slurring began to annoy me too much (”...and the swimmer in South Carolina is Jim Beams!”), we switched over to Fox News for the lulz we knew would await us there and never changed the channel after that.

It was riveting stuff.

As a connoisseur of Republican schadenfreude, it was pretty obvious that Fox was the place to be on this election night.

Megyn Kelly was clearly shell-shocked by the incoming results and you could tell with her, fairly early on, that she knew what was happening by a look of deer-in-the-headlights PANIC that crept over her face in real time during the broadcast. Also, they had her vamping constantly, but she’s just so unfunny, stiff and strident (and was so clearly off-put by Romney’s looming loss) that this fell completely flat and even I felt sorry for her. It was almost as if Fox News didn’t have much of a contingency plan when Obama won other than asking Megyn Kelly to wing it!

When Fox finally called it for Obama, it was like lacquer-haired Bret Baier, the one who blurted it out, had farted loudly behind the desk and the rest of them just looked down in embarrassment, shook their heads and muttered something. THAT was how the election results got called on Fox News last night: “Oh shit… he won.”

It was hysterically funny and SO REAL. I only wish that Sean Hannity had been on camera at that point, but alas, ‘twas not to be.

But did you hear what Papa Bear, Bill O’Reilly had to say earlier in the evening when the writing was already so clearly on the wall for R. Money:





And then there was supposed evil genius Karl Rove, who looked like he was trying to start a push-back against Fox News’ own “war room” of data analysts. He sort of scolded Kelly for calling Ohio too soon. It was a borderline nerd freakout, as if you could see the gears turning in his head as he realized that his days as one of the most influential people within the Republican party were coming to an abrupt end. That was a pretty extraordinary thing to watch:





After the commercial break, Rove came back on the air and basically said “Uh, okay, well, yeah, never mind.” Some evil genius “Turd Blossom” turned out to be this go-round. Rove couldn’t even buy an election (and this might be the GOP’s last election where they even get to try). Karl’s gonna have a lot of essplaining to do to the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and the other members of the Billionaire Boys Club about how he pissed their money down a black hole. Rove got fucking skunked last night, and he’s well aware of it, too, there’s no doubt about it.

For a little perspective: This was the widest vote to return an incumbent president to the White House since Ronald Reagan won 49 states in his 1984 reelection bid. That’s not a statistical fluke, no matter what the “know nothings” at Fox News, Breitbart and the Drudge Report want you to believe. What’s more, Frenchman John Kerry got over a million more votes in 2004 than Romney got on Tuesday.

Here’s what Fox News DIDN’T REPORT ON last night, at least not as long as we were watching:

Liberal hero Alan Grayson won his House seat back (Hell yeah!)

Wisconsin elected Tammy Baldwin, a proud lesbian woman, to the Senate, beating Tea party-backed former governor, Tommy Thompson.

Marijuana was decriminalized by Colorado and Washington voters.

Maryland and Maine became the first states in which the voters chose to legalize same-sex marriage.

Left for dead Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri beat Republican goatboy Todd Akin.

Liberal hero Elizabeth Warren won handily in Massachusetts.

Michele Bachmann, who raised more money than any other member of the House, barely squeaked by in her reelection.

Cuckoo Tea party favorite Col. Allen West lost his seat in the House.

Joe Donnelly beat Richard Mourdock in Indiana. God’s will?

Well then God must hate the Republicans’ fucking guts this year, that’s all I gotta say.

Other than the token liberal (I can’t recall her name) the only person on Fox News last night who actually appeared to pick up on the core message of what had transpired (other than Bill O’Reilly, I suppose) was Brit Hume who mused aloud that perhaps America has simply become more liberal than conservatives want to believe:

“Many of us have believed — and I still basically do — that that this is a center-right country. And a lot of conservatives have taken the view that liberals are really on the wane. If you look at tonight’s exit polling that we’ve seen so far, those that self-identified as liberals are about 24 percent, self-identified conservatives 35 percent, moderates 40 percent. Now, this apparent outcome tells you one thing about those moderates, that there are in that category an awful lot of them who are actually liberals.” “Now, liberal became kind of dirty word, that’s when the word progressive came into use. But I think that — but I don’t think — you take the conservative number, 35 percent, it’s certainly a share of those moderates that are moderate to conservative, you’ve still got a center-right country, but it’s more liberal than many may have thought looking at those numbers. It’s got to be.”

Well, there’s that, and they also happen to think the Republicans are batshit crazy lunatics.

I’m expecting Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to come up with time capsule-level shows tonight, aren’t you?

Required reading:

Welcome To Liberal America (Buzzfeed)

2012 or Never: Why 2012 is the Republicans’ Last Chance (New York magazine)

The Republicans Bet Everything, and Obama Won It All (New York magazine)





