Putative media critic Howard Kurtz, who now works for Fox News, cannot be this stupid. It's not possible.
This is past Glenn Beck levels of stupid and bordering on Louie Gohmertism, but Howard Kurtz indeed wrote an entire column positing that Rachel Maddow, a "liberal commenter" who "rips the Republicans every night", should not be moderating a presidential debate.
Maddow’s questions, which often were framed from the left, were well phrased but invariably ended with a polite query. Perhaps that’s just her style.
We would never see such politeness to the candidates from conservative debate moderators. No sir.
Imagine the reaction on the left if the Fox News moderators at a debate were Bret Baier and Sean Hannity, an unabashed conservative. The criticism of Fox for fielding such a team would have been intense.
Wait, what? By God, he seems to be serious.
Let's look at some of the moderators for the Republican debates so far. There's conservative commenter Hugh Hewitt (multiple times.) There's Neil Cavuto. There's "Hot Air" editor Mary Katherine Ham. Did I mention Hugh freakin' Hewitt?
In fact, the Republican Party explicitly made the decision to partner with conservative outlets throughout their debate schedule in order to provide an ample supply of suitably right-leaning question-askers, and leaned hard on outlets like CNN to use them rather than relying strictly on “journalists.” ABC got shackled to the IJ Review. NBC was handcuffed to the National Review—before National Review famously lost that spot due to their overt hostility to Trump. The entire point of the Republican debate plan this go-round was that the questions would be asked not just by "journalists", but by ideologically obsessed nutcases—sorry, by “conservative partisans.”
However, if a Democratic debate features a "liberal commenter", Fox News professional jourmanalist Howard Kurtz is all over that.
All right, I think I've decided that Howard Kurtz is putting us on. Nobody, and I mean nobody, would write a sniffling column pouting about a "liberal" asking questions at a Democratic debate the very same year that the Republican Party announced that conservative questioners at Republican debates was now a debate requirement. It can't be real. There's not enough cocaine in all of Fox News to make someone write that seriously, and this is the network that airs Fox & Friends.
You had us going there, Kurtz. You sly dog, you had us going. We almost thought you were an imbecile.