Maybe the Mayans were right about 2012 being the End Times. This feels like a sign.

It’s not just lefties; indies hit a combined 60 percent too. Could be that we conservatives are simply viewing things through right-tinted glasses, but when even an outfit as lefty as Vanity Fair accuses the White House of being “in greater control of the media than any administration before them,” I’m inclined to look deeper. One possibility: These results may indicate how large Fox News looms in the public’s media imagination. Glenn Beck’s been on the cover of Time, Obama’s top henchmen have been on Sunday morning chat shows whining about Hannity et al., and Nielsen often shows FNC drawing more viewers in primetime than the other three cable nets combined. The channel’s outsized prominence may be almost singlehandedly “balancing” the coverage of The One in voters’ minds. In fact, another question polled by Pew shows 47 percent labeling Fox as “mostly conservative”; by comparison, the news network with the highest number of those saying it’s “mostly liberal” (i.e. CNN) tops out at just 37 percent.

On a very much related note, this post by John Simpson made me laugh harder than any other in recent memory. Remember when Olby, Maddow, Shuster and the rest of the fair-and-balanced gang at MSNBC were reduced to doing stand-up routines about conservative “teabagging”? Simpson sure does:

I seriously doubt teabagger is an epithet conservative Republicans will embrace. Who would? But then it occurred to me. Who’s doing the real oral servicing here? We Tea Partiers, who object tooth and nail to every major scam and power grab liberal Democrats and the President are trying to shove down our throats? Or liberal left-wing mouthpieces who can’t open wide and fast enough for Obama’s Chocolate Munchkin Donut Drop?

Let’s face it. When the White House emails you on the air to correct you, there’s some serious dunking going on there. Funny. Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, who foisted that term in full measure on the public consciousness in mid-April, spent two and a half hours in secret with the President and some other major Obama microphones a few days ago. From what little we hear, the President spent some time railing against FOX News and Glenn Beck, but lips have been sealed very tight around the rest of what went on there. Could it be it was “time to take the dough nuts”?

Personally, I wouldn’t want that getting out either. But I think there was some hardcore slam-dunking going on there, and I’m not talking LeBron James.

Follow the link for further thoughts about an “airtight seal.” Exit question: In an NPR(!) online poll of almost 400,000 people, 56 percent side with Fox News over the White House?

Update: This seems like the right place for a link to Ace’s thoughts about “holding democracy hostage,” too.