The ominous undercarriage of the media

I’m watching The 5 on Fox (the show’s title seems to refer to the combined IQ of the panelists, plus former White House press sec’y Dana Perino), and they are frothing with faux fury at live-mic comments picked up today at a rare Mitt Romney press availability. What made this press availability even more rare than other Romney press availabilities was that he was actually going to take questions. So the reporters in the room are heard coordinating their strategy beforehand; there is one question they all want to ask him (The 5 hasn’t bothered to mention what the question was) and they all agree if Romney calls on them, they’ll ask it.

And then apparently Romney failed to answer the question—so really, it could have been about anything but the Salt Lake Olympics—in spite of repeated attempts by the traveling press corps to get him to do so. Sounds exactly like any Romney press event to me; surely they didn’t expect any unprecedented substantive answers on his alleged policies or his past activities, did they?

So I’m wondering what has this fine assemblage of the Fox News braintrust gathered in Casablanca police inspector-worthy shock?

It was media collusion!

It turns out—according to Fox—the open-mic caught the liberal media elitists with their pants down, conspiring to get one of the two men running for the highest office in the land to come clean about something... but they’re not saying what. (I paused it to write this much. I can’t wait to see what happens next! Maybe they’ll even run one of the times the question was posed so I can hear what it was that so offended Mr. Romney.)

Dana Perino is explaining that what Fox ‘caught’ the press doing is standard operating procedure for any politician, not just one gaining fame for being extra slithery with the truth. Then, because she is on Fox after all, she adds that just the same, the press doing their job in a coordinated, professional manner “makes them look like lame-os.”

Really? Lame-os? So we’re talking… Lame-oGate?

Okay, now it’s getting good. The middle-aged guy with the Midwestern accent is pointing a finger to the sky and snarling, “They colluded to ask one question, and then they asked it seven times!”

Somebody else chimes in, “And not let him get away from it!”

Not Let Him Get Away From ItGate?

The original guy has never stopped talking. “And again and again and again… it just exposes what they are.”

Something in the back of my head begins to hurt.

“They’re the east and the west coast wing of the Obama team, because they have Chicago covered…” he goes on to say, then stammers while he waits for more word-clouds to form in his brain, before finishing up with a corker so outlandish that even his cohorts start laughing out loud off-camera.

“It’s the ominous undercarriage of the media!”

(I guess this guy has been trying to get the phrase “ominous undercarriage” out there for a while, which is why his fellow panelists began chortling mid-sentence. Pause for more light-hearted banter.)

Oh, and I forgot to mention, this hilarity is unspooling in split-screen; 2/3 of the image is an inset of live video of rioting in Cairo, and the other 1/3 is the panel, laughing it up as they simultaneously obfuscate the day’s domestic news and trivialize a violent crisis as it occurs in real time.

I feel like my brain should explode—it certainly wants to, like a Twilight Zone or Star Trek robot that has been disarmed by the last-minute introduction of an irreconcilable logic loop—but somehow it does not.

Now the brunette babe on the panel (Fox has discovered that there are brunettes?) is accusing “the media” of “ambushing” Romney because he’s a conservative, like they did Bush, and covering up for Obama “when he says things that don’t make sense.”

Must. Remember. To. Breathe…

They still haven’t said Word One about what the question he dodged was. Now the brunette is praising Romney for his bravery in facing the press at all.

At this point, in deference to my brain, I turn off the TV. And I ponder. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.

What does it all mean? And why haven’t I heard of this show? It’s awesome—admittedly, in an appalling way, but still. Doesn’t Jon Stewart know about it? Maybe he finds the fake sincerity of Fox and Friends more grating the ginned-up shenanigans of The 5, but I have to give it to these guys for sheer, casual indecency.

Ooh, and I have to single Dana Perino out for special recognition. I can’t remember what president she worked for, but I can tell just by watching and listening to her that she knows better.

(Perhaps Fox is running the split screen of Romney dropping the ball at today’s press conference and anti-American rioting at overseas embassies because they are trying to make Romney look good by comparison?)

In the end, I think this show exists because Fox must have decided it’s on so late that only bloggers and other cranks will be up watching it anyhow, and most of us don’t stray far from media outlets that fail to buttress our own previously-held opinions.

Which is a shame, because I give The 5 four out of five fingers to the back of the throat. The undercarriage of the media doesn’t get more ominous, superfluous or entertaining than this.