My Clarion West almost-classmate Stephanie Denise Brown (got in but ultimately didn't go this year) has a cool short-short story up on Refelection's Edge.

Makes me sorry I wasn't able to read her stuff over the summer.

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One of my housemates has Fox News on the TV....a lot. Now, on the extremely slim off-chance that this person is reading, I should say that we're cool and I respect your right to watch whatever you like on the tv in that room. I always use the other one anyway.

But listening to this much stray Fox-propaganda from the other room is a good reminder of how very, very thoroughly I dislike the people who run that network. Endlessly repeated talking points are not news, and the nature of those talking points get pretty ridiculous.

Fox has been all-Kerry-all-the-time the last few days. For anyone reading this who doesn't follow U.S. politics, that's because Sentator Kerry (who is not a candidate for any office this time around) told a joke about how you should study hard in school so you don't turn out to be a dumbass like the President. The prepared written version of his speech said, "study hard, make an effort to be smart, and you can make something of yourself...otherwise you could get us stuck in Iraq."

But, being a spectacularly stiff and clumsy public speaker, he screwed it up and left out the "us" in the verbal version, meaning that anyone who didn't hear the context (a string of jokes making fun of W.) but just that one tiny clip could have plausibly misinterpreted it as meaning something like, "if you don't study hard and stay in school you could end up having no job options other than joining the military, which under present circumstances might not be fun."

Which actually isn't an entirely unfair point, but would of course be a tad insensitive and certainly a very politically stupid thing to say. And obviously not what he meant.

Nonetheleess, every time, morning, noon and night, I've caught snatches of Fox coverage, they've been going on...and on...and on about Kerry. "Kerry refuses to apologize." "Kerry apologizes." "Is Kerry's apology too little, too late?" "Did Kerry just ruin the Democrats' chances?"

Now, I don't like Kerry. There's a reason I voted for Nader. When Ralph came to speak at Michigan State in fall '04, I was a local warmup speaker. I told the crowd that "to march against the war in 2003 and vote for a candidate who's pledged to send more troops to Iraq in 2004 is a form of electoral psychitzophrenia." I still believe that. No question. I'm not a Kerry fan.

BUT. For God's sake.

It's a pretty sorry talking point. It's not like Kerry was caught taking bribes from Jack Ambramoff or soliciting sex from underage boys or getting drunk while quail hunting and shooting one of his friends. (To take three ever so hypothetical examples of things politicians might be caught doing.) Kerry screwed up a joke.

Which is, I take it, something no Republican has ever done, certainly not in recent memory.

If the Republicans (whoops, I mean, Fox News, a totally distinct entity that has nothing to do with the Republican Party) honestly can't come up with anything else to harp on, day after day, morning, noon and night, that tells you something about how badly they think they're screwed in Tuesday's election.