Oh, please find my fainting couch! Noted goat-lover Mickey Kaus has left the Daily Caller after mean boss Tucker Carlson pulled a column critical of Fox 'News'.

Fear not, gentle readers, because it's not like Kaus was criticizing Fox for lying to viewers or anything. Nay, it was simply a question of editorial decisions.

"It's pretty simple," Kaus said in an interview, "I wrote a piece attacking Fox for not being the opposition on immigration and amnesty -- for filling up the airwaves with reports on ISIS and terrorism, and not fulfilling their responsibility of being the opposition on amnesty and immigration.... I posted it at 6:30 in the morning. When I got up, Tucker had taken it down. He said, 'We can't trash Fox on the site. I work there.'"

Kaus says when he told Carlson he needed to be able to write about Fox, Carlson told him it was a hard-and-fast rule, and non-negotiable.

"He said it was a rule, and he wouldn't be able to change that rule. So I told him I quit," Kaus explained. "I just don't see how you can put out a publication with that kind of giant no-go area. It's not like we're owned by Joe's Muffler Shop, so we just can't write about Joe's Muffler shop."

It wasn't critical of the Fox News lies, just about how they weren't leading on immigration and amnesty. Good to know, from a dude who pretends he's just another independent thinker.

I'm not sure what Kaus expected. Driftglass explains:

When Roger [Ailes] decides deficits are irrelevant...nobody cares about deficits you terrorist-loving asshole because 9/11 changed everything!

When Roger decides deficits are the Most Important Issue in the World...hordes of enraged teabaggers fill the streets screaming about deficits and Kenya and taking their country back, while Village Elders gather in solemn conclave to insist that a cat-food commission be immediately convened to solve a problem they didn't give a shit about 10 minutes before.

And if, this Fall, Roger decides Real Patriots (tm) need to signify by, say, putting porcelain figurines up their butts, expect Crazy Uncle Liberty to show up this Thanksgiving with a Hummel "Merry Wanderer" shoved up his ass, demanding to know to why you hate Murrica!

This is the way the media works now and everyone knows it.

But since this is the way the media works now, no one is permitted to say it.

Well, some of us say it. It's just that no one listens to us because the True Believers cannot abide even the possibility that their go-to for All Affirming Things Political might be lying to them. This why they're True Believers in the first place! Said believers tithe to the College Republicans and support their grifting politicians, no matter how corrupt and evil they are.

That's the way the media works and they like it like that.
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