The Fox Network: freedom fighters, or the anchor around American pop culture's neck as it plummets down to the inevitable lowest common denominator in all forms of entertainment? Could be both! Fox is refusing to pay a $91,000 indecency fine from the FCC for a 2003 episode of the execrable show "Married By America" that featured guys licking whipped cream off strippers and being spanked [Variety]. On one hand, screw the uptight fascists at the FCC and their enforced moralizing! On the other hand, we know Fox is fighting this just so they don't set any precedents that would hinder their rush towards programming that will culminate in live executions of the poor on TV. So it's hard not to be torn on this issue. Below, what appears to be the only clip on YouTube of "Married By America' (not the stripper one). This was a justifiably unpopular show.

Rachel Marsden, the former pundit on the Fox show "Red Eye" who was tossed out for being too crazy, and who then went on to date Wikipedia guru Jimmy Wales before breaking up with him and putting his clothes up for sale on eBay, is now, predictably, unemployed. So she's trawling for jobs on Mediabistro, just like you! Marsden has supposedly applied to be a senior publicist at Maxim [P6]. Negatives: She has demonstrated that she is a serial loose cannon who will probably seduce the magazine's top editors and draw them into a scandalous and embarrassing public affair. Positives: She doesn't really like the Black Crowes, either.

The Moment of Truth—the bold Fox reality experiment that promised to pulverize real lives into a fine confetti by hooking average Americans up to a lie detector and having them answer brutally personal questions about their crotch-stuffing and philandering habits—has failed to really deliver on its promise.

So, anybody catch last night's episode of Fox's show, "You're A Dirty Whore, Aren't You?" Okay, I see here the formal title is "Moment of Truth." Last night, a blonde, curly-haired hostess/ model from New York hit the trifecta by insulting her mother, insulting her friend, and proving herself to be a dirty, bad girl. Whoa, Fox was just as outraged as you were! Why is it so hard to find clean-living people for these reality shows? In perfect form, the guest proved that both her current and former boyfriend are smug assholes (simply by allowing them to show their faces), and then proceeded to confidently continue to sell her honor past the point of no return. And how much money did she walk away with in exchange? The highlight clip is below. This show makes my soul feel weird.

Fox News morning anchoress Gretchen Carlson is so thrilled about the arrival of Spring that she can't stop smiling, even when delivering the news of 13 deaths from severe weather. "Guess what—it's the first day of Spring! Whoo-hoo!" she exclaims over an aerial shot of a flooded house. She almost regains her composure: "But it's not so great for some people in the country." Amazing clip, after the jump.

How is Fox News supposed to bring the REAL news to the American mainstream when they are busy fighting off a bug infestation of the newsroom? If only we were making a metaphorical joke about the network's tendency to employ cockroaches. We're not! A liberal media outlet, the New York Times, reports that Fox News discovered an infestation of the dreaded, disgusting BEDBUGS a few weeks ago "when an employee 'caught a bug and showed it to us.'" YUCK. But Fox News employees get even nastier than that: One of them brought the bugs in!

· HBO shakes things up in their original series development department, moving longtime president Carolyn Strauss into a new, not-quite-fired-but-let's- see-what-some-new-blood- can-do-about- never-letting- John From Cincinnati -happen-again position. [Variety]
· Hollywood StrikeWatch 2: The Bickering. SAG and AFTRA can't seem to decide whether basic cable should be included in the upcoming actors negotiation, leading to a flurry of strongly worded letters and "near-constant sniping" between the two unions, who'll ultimately air out their differences in a choreographed rumble in the Farmers Market parking lot, set to the music of Leonard Bernstein. [Variety]
· Marvel Studios has sold the exclusive broadcast rights to FX for a package of five of their movies, including the upcoming Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, along with three more, yet-to-be-determined titles. (We're pulling for a She-Hulk Vs. She-Thing, starring Rachel Bilson and Mischa Barton.) [Variety]

Roly-poly Republican strategist Karl Rove has a bit of a bad reputation, what with his mastery of quasi-legal dirty tricks, spearheading of underhanded whisper campaigns, and cut-throat dedication to enabling the most damaging presidential administration in living memory. So everyone basically thinks of him as a figure of cartoonish evil, like Dick Cheney. But now that he's on Fox News as a commentator, the liberals who run the rest of the media are shocked to find that they actually like Karl Rove!

When I read about the upcoming season of Fox's reality show "Solitary," I was amazed people would put themselves through the stress of living in solitary confinement, choking on ball gags, hearing screaming babies and being woken every 19 minutes by alarms, just for reality show fame and $50k. Then I realized this show already ran for a full season on the little-known Fox Reality Channel. Not only did nine people go through this torture, they did it on a network where they couldn't even get as famous as a Blind Date contestant. Watching the following nine minutes (the winner spent twelve days in the torture room) drove me crazy:

We're loath to admit we've fallen behind on new episodes of The Simpsons, so we're extremely grateful to the reader who pointed the following out to us: On Sunday's show, after a fairly hilarious sequence in which Homer engages in an illicit affair with a gyro cone (which, for $4300, could basically give you all the unsafe satisfaction you could handle), the portly paterfamilias then puts a happy ending on his marathon session of rotisserie lovemaking with a trip to Pudding on the Ritz. His order? "One Butterscotch Stallion."

To say that David Archuleta arrived at the Idol Thunderdome last night carrying with him the judges' raised expectations is akin to saying the Magi had high hopes for that Nazareth kid over at the Ye Bethlehem Inn. He was, as Simon Cowell pronounced in the second week of competition, "the one to beat"—as good a coronation of Saviordom as any. His myth quickly grew: Animated woodland critters would suddenly appear every time he opened his mouth to sing...His voice could heal the lame, bringing to his feet scores of girls afflicted with a rare condition that rendered them incapable of lowering their arms...His farts smelled like freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. But anyone watching could immediately tell that something was not right:

Rupert Murdoch got all excited about his new business channel, Fox Business Network, which was totally going to crush CNBC after launching last Feruary. Murdoch goosed ratings by putting a Penthouse centerfold and also internet seductress Rachel Marsden on air, and within four months shared a very special Valentine's day semen story with viewers. But the doddering old media mogul, who has received so much worshipful praise for his well-timed acquisition of social networking website MySpace, forgot to register FoxBusinessNetwork.com before announcing the station to the world, and now a court just ruled he will never ever get the domain name back from a cybersquatter. Luckily, someone who knows something about the internet convinced the old bastard to shell out the $15 to reserve FoxBusiness.com, so expect the Fox Business Network to lose the "Network" part of its name in a hurry, or change its title to clownpenis.fart, the domain name used by a slow-to-the-Web bank in a 1999 Saturday Night Live commercial. Video of the SNL commercial after the jump.

Like a desperate terrorist handcuffed to a suitcase nuke and eyeing a nearby hacksaw, shooting on the new season of 24 found itself barbarically cleaved in two by the writers strike. Since Season 7 won't now premiere until January 2009, producers have announced the filming of a 24 TV movie to tide audiences over until then. Whether audiences even bother returning after the series's last predictable and outlandish season remains to be seen. By the time the movie airs in the fall, however, we'll at least have a better idea of whether they should have stuck with the African American-president template, or were wise in switching it up to the Cherry Jones model instead. [THR]

Despite the dearth of new programming options on television these days, successfully launching a new show can still be quite the challenge. Fox's new show, Unhitched, is no exception. While it has a strong pedigree (EP'd by The Farrelly Brothers), there's still a lot of work to be done in getting viewers to pay attention to a show that has no stars (we crush on Rashida Jones, too, but her name doesn't exactly equate to appointment viewing). And although the show debuted strong when it aired this Sunday (Mediaweek reported a 4.5/7 in overnights, good for a 92% hold from its Family Guy lead-in), the suits at Fox are taking no chances in their promos for the show. Their latest work invokes not one, not two but THREE quotes from TV scribes who compared the show to Seinfeld. Subtle, it is not. As for its effectiveness, we'll just have to wait and see. Oh, and for what it's worth, we liked the pilot quite plenty. [Fox]

Realizing the truth about his gay-stripping past had finally hit the mainstream media, American Idol finalist David Hernandez pulled one of the savviest moves in the competitive karaoke play book last night: He deflected the growing outrage with a booger-colored smokescreen. So repulsive was the tale of the flaky, walnut-sized (or was it pea-sized? It'll be the size of a wide-mouthed bass the next time he tells it!) snot-pellet plainly visible in the Celine Dion-interpreter's headshots, any connection in the minds of the American public between Hernandez and the notion of physical desirability was instantly nullified, offering him a clean slate with which to move into further rounds of competition.

The producers of American Idol offer their official reaction to GayStripperGate, in which it was revealed that contestant David Hernandez used to make a living at Phoenix-area men's burlesque Dick's Cabaret (Where Even the Dicks Give You Jazz Hands!™). From a TVGuide.com interview with Idol producer Ken Warwick:

We've expressed some frustration that American Idol hasn't yet given us more to work with by way of controversies, but we're happy to say that today brings some solid progress in that department. For starters, we have official confirmation via AP report that dark horse contestant David Hernandez once made a living giving dark horsey rides:

We're still holding out for the American Idol scandal motherload, but so far, we've had to settle for underwhelming pseudo-dirt regarding the wig-wearing, gay-stripping skeletons hiding inside some of the male contestants' closets. Even that Idol scandal mainstay—the racy photo—is a little bit of a letdown this season. Where last year brought us Antonella Barba peeing, this year, we get this rather humdrum shot of Ramiele Malubay grabbing a handful of sushi-slinging co-worker boob. Wake us up when it's revealed that puppy-eyed front runner David Archuleta is actually a 52-year-old woman with a song in her heart and a growth-deficiency in her DNA.

Mustachioed embarrassment to the profession of journalism Geraldo Rivera appeared on The View today, where he castigated fellow blowhard Lou Dobbs for the sorts of things we have regularly attacked him for, but it was Geraldo saying it so we all felt a bit silly. Of course, Geraldo works for noted reasoned advocates of humane, sensible immigration reform Fox News, so this is really just another salvo in the tiresome Fox News vs. CNN (and sometimes NBC) battle. The clip is attached below.

On last night's American Idol results show, two of this year's nine virtually identical blondes—cloned at Fremantle Laboratories off a Season One contestant who's been kept in a veal stall and fed on a diet of protein-boosted Jamba Juice and easy-listening favorites—were at risk of elimination. Only one was cut however, and that was (checking the website again just to be certain) Alaina Whitaker.