After all the hype about Fast and Furious, excellently captured by Stewart, the right wing really wants what was advertised—a big scandal. But unfortunately, like any tease, Fox News can not deliver this from a rather sad case of government incompetence. Like all of its outrage, the right must to settle on minor details-like ‘secret documents’ rather than on any intentional lawbreaking.

Why the audience never sees that Fox is setting them up for disappointment and impotent rage, is a sad commentary on how easy it is to manipulate them. Its why Fox must play the game like they are a bunch of idiots too—lest their audience realize that the sneaky Fox is manipulating and abusing them like a psychotic puppet master.

There is a major story on The ATF and Fast & Furious out today in Fortune, by Katherine Eban. She did a lot of research on it, and it shows. The story clarifies what happened, what the story was with the “whistleblowers”, and why it is that Darrell Issa still hasn’t had public hearings with ATF guys.

It’s a bunch of dirty laundry and personal backbiting, coupled with all the usual beaurocratic snafus. The two primary “whistleblowers” turn out to be disgruntled agents in a fairly disfunctional team. I’ll at least give Larry Alt points for a really funny, albeit totally improper false memo he posted on the door of his office about the team leader he clearly despised.

Among the big things cleared up is that memo that the GOP keeps trumpeting from Dave Voth about the “exciting opportunity” and the “fun”, which turns out to be a response to the group all whining about a wiretap detail that nobody wanted to do.

The reason this stuff wasn’t being passed on to Issa is pretty obvious. It’s not criminal behavior going on here. It’s more like junior high school playground hijinks which really isn’t something for Congress to be dealing with. (Are we really going to take up taxpayers’ time in the House with who told who to turn off the “Godzilla” email alert sound in the office?). This is the sort of thing best handled the way it already was – by transferring people and cleaning up the mess.

There’s no conspiracy here. There is one ATF agent (Dodson) who has been giving roaringly false testimony and has been completely hypocritical in this situation. And there’s the usual round robin of blame. But there’s nothing here that merits the tantrums and histrionics being thrown at Eric Holder by Issa. Which just points up the fact that this is clearly just an election year game.

Eban is smart enough to include in the article Issa’s own legal problems from carrying a loaded and concealed weapon in his car.

truman, don’t forget to factor in Reagan’s killing off the Fairness Doctrine. (Actually, when you think about it, it’s a bit interesting how the right-wing of that era—near-moderates by today’s standards—only started accusing the major networks, CBS especially, of being “biased” AFTER the Fairness Doctrine was killed. For a network that likes to tag itself “fair and balanced,” FoxNoise wouldn’t exist if the right-wing hadn’t ended the original “fair and balanced” practice embodied by the Fairness Doctrine.)

Fux Noise is the abominable result when corrupt media magnate Wrinkled Rupert hired partisan political hack Jabba T. Ailes.