Challenge to a ‘Dual’

To: The Murdochs

Re: Let’s get both sides together, now.

Dear Rupert and Mr. Murdoch:

We’ve been watching your Fox network for some time and frankly, we’re concerned that you might be heading for some sort of breakdown. Before making a formal report to the medical authorities, we’ve put our heads together and decided to reach out to you.

We hate to be in your face. Both of them. But Rupe and Mur, let’s look at the facts:

On the one side of the street, you’ve got your fair and bi-ased, oops, balanced, news folk. Your Brit Humes, your Bill O’Reillys, your Hannitys, your Colmes’. All red-stated, red-faced conservatives, pro-Bush, anti, well, anti basically everything else. Ah, yes, but pro-family values. Deep-rooted, God-fearing, Bible-thumping family values.

But like on a two-lane highway, across the street and lying prostrate in the gutter you’ve got those same values flattened like roadkill … flattened by the likes of such programs as last season’s Temptation Island, Who’s Your Daddy, Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, ad nauseum.

Rupe and Mur, have you noticed the dichotomy? Let us double our efforts to be perfectly clear:

Shows such as Arrested Development and the short-lived series Wonderfalls had loveable gay and lesbian characters in second banana roles. But since your newsgang gets so up in arms about that same banana (wow! now that could be an interesting premise!), how do you reconcile featuring lifestyle alternatives during the 8:00-9:00 family hour, yet lambasting them during the news at 10:00?

We understand schizophrenia, we live with it bi-weekly — yet these actions cause us to do a double take. Since there’s two of us, that would actually be a quadra-take. We pray we don’t get whiplash.

Speaking of a viewsome twosome, your Fox sitcom Stacked, starring Pamela Anderson, boasted the logline: “You can’t judge a book by its cover – especially when it’s only covered by a miniskirt and a baby-tee.” To celebrate the show’s premiere last season, your Fox Commissary offered lip-smacking stacks of “Pam Cakes”, If workers had missed out on breakfast, there was a second chance at lunchtime, where dessert was a melons-with-cherries-on-top bar. Did you check with that boob of boobs, Mr. O’Reilly, to get his reaction? Oh, you say you left a message with his latest news producer? No, wait, neither of them could come to the phone because they were in some shower together? What, trying to wash away sin? Baptism by Mr. Bubble? It’s all too confusing.

Remember 2003, when Married in America got axed from the lineup? Raleigh’s WRAZ stated that the series “demeaned and exploited the institution of marriage”. How does that reconcile with the push for faux tablets of the Ten Commandments that the conservatives would have decorating each and every street corner, shopping mall, and dentist’s office?

We can see Moses/Charlton Heston now, shaking his head, his two-foot long beard gently swaying in the breeze, the NRA code of ethics tucked deep inside his robe.

“Excuse me, O Murdoch,” Moses would intone. “When your minions were creating this Married in America, did you forget about Commandment Number Seven? The one about adultery? Not to mention Number Ten, the one about the coveting? Not just the neighbor’s wife, but the ass as well? No, I’m not insulting Bill O’Reilly. The Daily Show does a much better job of that than I.”

We want to assure you that you’re not alone. Janus, the two-faced Roman God of mythology, is known for his two faces that look in opposite directions at the same time. The man can truthfully boast that he’s never been stabbed in the back. We also understand that when he crosses the street, he automatically looks both ways. Bi-facial has its perks. Calm down, we said bi-facial, not bi-racial. Take a breath and pop another thorazine.

Bi-polar disease is no joke. All right, we laughed. Twice. Followed by immediate shame. See? Like twin cheeks of the same posterior, we feel the divide.

Please Rupe, please Mur, we’re begging you to get some help. Make a conference call to a hot line. Take a guest suite at a hospital. “Just do do it”.

And bi the way, next time you’re in town, what do you say we do lunch, maybe meet for Chinese? Between the four of us, we’ll be able to order one of each from Column A and Column B.

Yours and Yours,

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde