I just assumed that common sense would tell you that when you've the rump roast, Teahadist so-called "Freedom Caucus" holding the rest of the right wing extremists in the House hostage if they don't get their way on everything and mucking up the works when it comes to electing a new Speaker, the word "chaos" would be an appropriate description of what's going on, and a tepid one as well.

Don't tell Fox's Howard Kurtz that though, because he believes the nonexistent so-called "liberal media" is beating up on those poor House Republicans and "over hyping" the unprecedented disarray we're seeing among their ranks right now.

KURTZ: Kevin McCarthy's stunning decision to drop out of the election for speaker has thrown the house into an uproar. A very big story, no question about it, but some liberal commentators seem to be taking a certain glee in the GOP's troubles. […]

Are the media in general and some liberal commentators in particular, turning this into, I don't know, Armageddon?

Sadly for Howie, even his guests, The Daily Beast and former National Review writer, Betsy Woodruff, former NBC correspondent Fred Francis and The Atlantic's Molly Ball, refused to go along with the premise and all thought that the coverage was warranted.

Kurtz was also upset that the media reported on the rumors of an affair between Kevin McCarthy and his cohort, Renee Ellmers and was upset that saying anything about it all on television was going to ruin their reputations. As the panel pointed out to Kurtz, once the story was all over the Internet, you're not going to put that genie back in the bottle anyway, so it's irresponsible to pretend that the rumors, true or not, may not have had something to do with McCarthy's hasty decision to withdraw his name from the running for Speaker.

I'd also love to know when Fox started caring about whose reputation they ruined by spreading lies and innuendo? Kurtz should clean up his own house first before he complains about what anyone else in the media is doing.