(As for Jolie, who was the memorable beneficiary of a long journalistic wet kiss from CNN's Anderson Cooper last year, her handlers reportedly stiff-armed Fox News from the premiere of her new film, "A Mighty Heart"; distributor Paramount Pictures later said the failure to include the cable network was "an honest mistake").
A Fox News spokeswoman told me Thursday that the network is "moving ahead" with plans for the debate (the network declined to make Ailes or another executive available for comment). But if it happens, the event may be as about as well attended as a Viewer Appreciation Party for MSNBC's microscopically rated Tucker Carlson. The only candidates to confirm publicly that they'll appear at the Fox News event are Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) -- not exactly the heavyweights in this bout.
Through a campaign spokeswoman, Jonathan Prince, Edwards' deputy campaign manager, e-mailed me a statement: "There's just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending to be objective. If there was any uncertainty as to Fox's objectivity, it was put to rest when they attacked Democratic candidates, Democratic constituency groups and the Nevada Democratic Party when their last proposed debate was canceled for lack of support." (Representatives for the Clinton and Obama camps confirmed to me that their candidates wouldn't appear on the Fox debate but declined to say more on the record.)
Debates are supposed to serve as an agnostic forum for the candidates, but of course politics corrupted that lofty ideal a long time ago. Back in 1988, the nonpartisan League of Women Voters disgustedly pulled out of sponsoring the presidential debates, arguing that the campaigns tried so hard to manipulate the process they were perpetuating "fraud" on American voters.
What's happening with the Fox News debate is the latest stop in that sorry journey of behind-the-scenes manipulation of what viewers see and hear.
"The Fox boycott is a demonstration of the grass-roots anger at Fox among Democratic activists," Jeremy D. Mayer, associate professor of public policy at George Mason University, told me. "We've never seen anything like it in the past because while many Republicans believed that the mainstream media was biased against them, they never felt that one network was so much worse than the others that a targeted boycott made sense."
