'Fair and balanced' anti-Clinton and Obama jokes by Fox News chief

This is the tone for future coverage that the top guy at Fox News, Roger Ailes, is setting:

It is true that just in the last two weeks Hillary Clinton has had over 200 phone calls telling her in order to win the presidency she must stay on the road for the next two years. It is not true they were all from Bill.

[Laughter]

And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, 'Why can't we catch this guy?'

It should be a no-brainer for Obama and Clinton to skip this debate, given it's sponsored by the premier propaganda outlet of the conservative movement. It's the place Ann Coulter runs to for sanctuary, where racist blowhards trash Obama's church for not being Christian enough since it's -- gasp! -- a black church in a black neighborhood.

And what's more, Ailes threatened Edwards:

Any candidate for high office of either party who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake about journalists. And any candidate of either party who cannot answer direct, simple, even tough questions from any journalist runs a real risk of losing the voters.

The Hotline looked at that threat, and says it's the reason people like us are skeptical:

John Edwards is skipping a debate -- one of more than a dozen -- arguably a little less fundamental to our deliberate democracy. And the threat here is that Fox News will somehow treat Edwards differently if he refuses to appear at their debate. Doesn't that reinforce the reasons why Edwards (spurred by Nevada grassroots Dems, MoveOn and Kos) is dubious.

They're going to treat Edwards differently regardless, since he's one of those, you know, Democrats. It's what Fox does.

Yesterday, Harry Reid piled on Fox and hung out his local party out to dry:

When the party announced in February that Fox would be broadcasting the debate, it issued a statement in which Reid was quoted as saying "This is more great news for Nevada. I'm happy FOX News will be a partner for the August presidential debate."

Asked Thursday if we was standing by that statement, Reid said "I hold elation" over the attention that the Nevada caucus is getting from presidential candidates and that Nevada debates will be televised. But he suggested his statement might have been different "had I known at that time that it would be a controversy."

In addition to distancing himself from the FOX decision Thursday -- "I don't like FOX News" -- the Senate Majority Leader reiterated several times that the Nevada Democratic Party is independent and not controlled by him, at one point going so far as to say "I just don't know what's going on in the party."

Regardless of where this goes from here (and I can't imagine this debate will happen now), fact is Fox News' efforts to paint themselves a credible news operation has suffered serious damage. There are nearly 200 articles on Google News on the controversy, every single one of them referring to Fox News as a conservative propaganda outlet. And that's just on print, not including air time spent on this story.

So not only is the future of this debate in question, and the "fair and balanced" coverage it would provide, but the whole controversy has broadly exposed the fact that Fox News is anything but "fair and balanced".

So buckle down, the right wing is about to throw one major hissy fit.