Peter LaBarbera decided to get on the computer tonight to reprint a malformed little tirade from one Daniel Zanoza, “executive director” of some group called “Republicans for Fair Media.” Zanoza’s piece bemoans the fact that Bill O’Reilly ran a “Culture Warriors” segment, and none of the panelists supported keeping Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in place. Worse than that? Even Bill O’Reilly supported repeal! (See update below.) The hysterical, fearful mental state which led to Zanoza’s dismay also leads him to ask “Is Fox news tacking to the left” to “appease and attract more liberal viewers?”

Uh, Daniel, no.

Fox News is not tacking to the left. Your positions are just rapidly becoming so grotesque in the public eye that even Fox is beginning to realize how ill-informed and bigoted they are.* You refer to lifting DADT as a “social experiment,” the favored term of know-nothings like Elaine Donnelly, but the reality is that gays serve in the US Military already and have for years, and the institution hasn’t fallen apart. Likewise, gays serve openly in the militaries in the United Kingdom, Israel, and a host of other places, and if you’d done any research on the issue before hunting/pecking your ignorance into the perpetuity of the internet, you’d know that the Israeli military is one of the fiercest fighting forces in the world. EVEN WITH ALL THOSE HOMOS!

I guess we’re just a hell of a lot tougher than your tortured little minds would like to admit.

As I said above, when you’re losing Fox News, you might as well pack it in, because you’ve lost the war.

(By the way, the funniest line in Zanoza’s screed is where he talks about how shocked he was to hear this “liberal” stuff because Fox is supposed to be “Fair and Balanced,” which, in the wingnut mind, means never having to be confronted with ideas you disagree with/have no rational argument against. Wingnuts are such delicate creatures.)

*A turning point for that was likely Elaine Donnelly’s embarrassing testimony before Congress a while back, when Patrick Murphy tore her to pieces as others present in the room openly marveled at the insane things coming out of her mouth. Good times.

UPDATE: Jeremy pulled the transcript (something I should have done, but didn’t think about in my pre-coffee writing) and it seems that Daniel Zanoza’s account of the O’Reilly segment doesn’t even match reality. The two panelists indeed supported repeal, and O’Reilly played a bit of devil’s advocate against them, and from what I can see, pulled out some tired conservative tropes about the military not wanting openly gay people serving. (They tend to rely on a flawed, unscientific poll of Military Times readers, who are mostly older, and many are retired.) As Jeremy said, the exchange is pretty much what you would expect from O’Reilly. So Zanoza’s “the sky is falling!” hysteria, aside from being insane, was based on watching a television segment that simply didn’t happen.