'A' is for ... no, don't

Those fun-loving japesters at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network! They sure know how to get a "laugh" out of any "situation"!

Any fan of Cookie Monster on Sesame Street knows that "C" is for cookie.

But at the Obama White House, "A" may be for acorn -- as in acorn cookies served at Monday's annual Christmas party.

The chocolate cookies shaped like an acorn were quite a hit with Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

"I didn't expect to see such stark symbolism," King said in an e-mail.

President Obama worked with the community organizing group ACORN in the mid-90s. But now ACORN faces a host of allegations related to voter fraud in the 2008 election and has been weakened by an undercover expose that shows employees offering tax advice to a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute.

Thanks for the reminder! I've been so terrified by Climategate that I almost forgot ACORN!

The irony of the White House dishing out acorn-shaped chocolate cookies seemed a little, well, "nutty" to King. The Iowa Republican is one of the loudest voices calling for Congress to investigate ACORN. ("Nutty"! Get it?)

King pocketed several of the acorn cookies at the White House soiree and even stowed a few at home in his freezer. King even delivered a real acorn to House Judiciary Committee John Conyers, D-Mich., in an effort to launch a dialogue about the organization's legal woes. (And what an icebreaker that must have been.)

"Bill Clinton redefined a two and a three-letter word," King said, a reference to Clinton's denial of the Lewinsky scandal. "But from the man who wrote 'The Audacity of Hope,' we were served the very redefinition of the word 'audacity.'"

That Steve King -- always there when Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., needs someone to keep him from looking like the Stupidest Person Named "King" in Congress. Don't you wish you were on his e-mail list?

If you spend some time with the secondary stories on this page, you'll get a pretty good idea of how news is judged and created over at Fox. "News" is less a matter of what happened than of what the Party of Lincoln thinks about what happened. That's not necessarily wrong (certainly not in isolation), but it does put the balance thing into perspective rather well.