I’m returning to the world of people who can breathe through their noses. I have a lot of catching up to do, but do see Jonathan Chait’s “The Fox News–iest Segment in Fox News History.” It’s a clip of Bill O’Reilly in full Bullying Purveyor of Ignorance mode that is horribly fascinating. It’s like animated road kill — ghastly, but try not to watch.

Also don’t miss Alan Colmes, playing the role of useful idiot/alleged liberal foil, whose “defense” of President Obama is just mushy enough to give O’Reilly’s tirade a veneer of plausibility. As PM Carpenter says,

Yet to me the most captivating character on the “Factor”‘s set is not Bill O’Reilly, but Alan Colmes, Fox News’ “feeble” and “sniveling” token of liberalism who appears regularly on the network only to be abused, interrupted, and humiliated. Colmes is all too happy to oblige, hence his regular appearances; plus, he routinely delivers some of the weakest intellectual arguments for and wimpish defenses of liberalism, or the left, or the center-left, or whatever you care to call it. Fox calls it delightful, since it’s so poorly represented.

Is Holmes real, or is he a CGI?