It’s been a week of ups and downs in the political news world, with probably a few more downs for the majority of you. With that in mind, I thought we might kick off the weekend shift with something a bit more on the light side. The Huffington Post decided to break some big news on Friday regarding the long, ongoing war and the prospects for peace. No… I’m not talking about Afghanistan here. It’s the several years long War on Fox News waged by Media Matters for America. (There will be no free T-shirt for the first person in the comments to quote that last line and say, “who?”) And the good news for fans of peace everywhere is that they have won.

Since its founding in 2004, the progressive watchdog group Media Matters for America has been a thorn in the side of Fox News. Its dozens of staffers monitor the network’s leadership, hosts, guests and financial dealings incessantly, calling out misinformation, conflicts of interest and evidence of a partisan agenda, in a bid to shed light on the workings of the right-wing echo chamber…

“The war on Fox is over,” said Media Matters Executive Vice President Angelo Carusone. “And it’s not just that it’s over, but it was very successful. To a large extent, we won.”

I’m not sure how dismal things must be over at Fox News this weekend. It’s a tall building, and I hope the windows are sealed so the workers there aren’t hurling themselves out into the streets. But to get the full impact of exactly how badly Media Matters has destroyed the Fox Right Wing Trickery Machine, I decided to check in at TV By the Numbers to see what the last available ratings were for the various cable news networks. These are from Thursday.

Even if you just look at the key ratings demographic for the day, you’ll see that total viewership for Fox actually exceeds CNN, MSNBC and CNBC combined. I’ve heard of defining victory down, but this is taking things to an entire new level.

This from Bryan Preston at PJ Media, though you really need to read all the stats and details he provides.

Media Matters isn’t declaring victory, despite the Huffington Post putting their best spinner on the story. It’s waving a white flag.

My condolences to the entire media family at Fox. This must be a tough day, and we wish them the best as they somehow struggle through.