October 7, 2006: FOX News issued an apology for their punctuation typo in their coverage of the Mark Foley case.
"In times of such partisan and global tension, we find it appalling the Democrats would stoop to such minutae. The American people aren't interested in punctuation," said Laurence Oser, Republican junior assistant ombudsman for deflecting media flak. "Hell, they ain't much for grammar. The Democrats choose to look at our small mistakes instead of bigger issues. They aren't even debating our words any more. I mean, FOX's. This is the sort of micromanaging that will not appeal to Heartland Values. They have, indeed, gone backwards from the era of Quayle-baiting."
The furore erupted yesterday when a FOX NEWS update mistakenly represented "D. Hastert" as "D-Hastert" and came on the heels of disgraced former Representative Mark Foley being incorrectly referred to as a Democrat.
"It's not fair," chimed in Billy Igot, Republican associate message streamlining technician. "I think the American people know that when you have Rep. DeLay, for instance, it means Representative and not necessarily Republican. Oops, I meant had. That wasn't fair, either."
Strong, incisive reasoning also came from Chris Rook, White House ambassador to FOX News, stated "Perhaps one side the press did not consider is that even FOX News has been suckered by the speculation-cum-certainty the past few days that the House will go to the Democrats. So FOX heard Speaker and thought Democrat. It's another example of liberal media bias in action, affecting even those who know about it. Liberals take too much pride in being all touchy-feely about the environment and whatnot, but the last week has shown Republicans can be, too."