From your lips to dog's ear

If your first reaction to Wednesday evening's top story at the Fair 'n' Balanced homepage was on the order of "OMG the wine mom agitators are eating the dogs and eating the cats of the people who live there," there's probably a reason for that. And no doubt "going after the dogs" would be the sort of thing for which we have rules of engagement. But let's look a bit more closely at the trail from a 3:45 p.m. Homeland Security* tweet to Our Top Story posted at 7:34 and see how quickly the panic button should be punched.

For starters, the Fox lede introduces a nice bit of syntactic ambiguity:

Federal officials on Wednesday said a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) K-9 was targeted in Minneapolis after an employee at a kennel wrote "ICE OUT" on the dog’s feed chart.

Fox tends to be promiscuous with subordinators (you can add "as tensions reach fever pitch" to almost any headline, even if your heroes had just tamped down the tensions in the previous day's story), but this one goes -- maaaybe -- a step beyond the tweet. Was Dina (no reason to think she is not a Very Good Dog) targeted after someone wrote on her food chart, or does "after" refer to when the federal officials sent their tweet?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said anti-ICE agitators in Minneapolis are targeting CBP K-9s, including a K-9 named "Dina."

"At the kennel where K-9 Dina was staying, it was discovered that an employee had written "ICE OUT" on her feed chart," DHS wrote in a social media post. "THEY’RE EVEN GOING AFTER THE DOGS!"

And that's about the extent of the news, except for this:

It is unclear which kennel Dina was staying at or the current employment status of the employee allegedly responsible.

"It is unclear" here is shorthand for "we have no idea and don't see why we should bother to check," but enough about the Rules of Journalism. The rest is boilerplate: just enough to support another advance in the Everybody Is Mean To ICE saga.

Attackwise, though, there seems to be a bit of a problem. Unlike the brave officers who can hardly sit down for a meal without having to get up and arrest the staff, how does Dina know she's being gone after? Even if she can read (being a Very Good Dog, after all), would she know enough Restaurant English to tell whether "NO ICE" is a drink order or a political statement? Or could it be that the wine mom agitators are actually going after Dina's humans?

It's a decades-old truism of media sociology that a Hearst or a Murdoch doesn't need to hover over the shoulders of the staff to ensure that every headline has just the right number of adjectives -- or which tweet makes it to the top of the page. If you don't know that when you're hired, you'll pick it up as soon as you see someone praised for getting it right or yelled at for getting it wrong. Homeland Security doesn't have to tell Fox what to do; it just has to throw a batting-practice fastball.

* If only there was a German acronym for "secret state police." 

It's $45 at Home Depot

It doesn't take a lot to make a top story at the Fox News homepage,* but a few key hurdles do need to be cleared. Brown People Behaving Badly + Liberal Hypocrisy + Commies + They're Being Mean to Mister Trump Again is hard to beat as a starting lineup:

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has officially moved into the historic Gracie Mansion, and he's already hoping to make changes. The mayor spoke to reporters on Jan. 12 and shared his "aspirational hope" to have a few bidets installed in the mayor's residence.

"One thing that we will change is we will be installing a few bidets into Gracie Mansion," Mamdani said. "That’s an aspirational hope. We’ll see if we can get it done."

A prominent New York City Democrat mocked the mayor's idea, painting it as a rich man's fantasy coming from someone who preaches socialism.

Well, now you've got my attention. James Carville? (Nah, not New York enough.) The "Pod Save America" boys? Andrew Cuomo himself?

"He’s been mayor for a minute and now the socialist thinks he’s flush with so much cash he can buy bidets," the prominent Democrat, who asked to remain anonymous, told Fox News Digital.

Oh. 

When speaking to Fox News Digital, the prominent Democrat pointed out the difference between the reaction to Mamdani's "aspirational hope" to add bidets versus President Donald Trump's renovations to the White House's Lincoln Bedroom bathroom.

Trump posted photos of the renovated bathroom on Truth Social in November celebrating the upgrade which included "highly-polished, statuary marble." While the president argued that the renovation was in line with the original vision for the space, historians disagreed and comedians mocked him. John Oliver, the host of "Last Week Tonight," called it "tone-deaf."

The president's renovations to the East Wing ballroom have also drawn criticism and mockery with Democrats taking aim at the president over the project. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said during an appearance on MSNBC that Trump "found time to demolish the East Wing of the White House so that he can build a ballroom where he can be celebrated as if he was a king."

The East Wing renovation was mocked on "Saturday Night Live," which did a skit featuring James Austin Johnson as Trump and Miles Teller as Drew and Jonathan Scott from HGTV's popular home makeover show "The Property Brothers." The mockery didn't end there. During a "Weekend Update" segment, Michael Che said he was glad the floor looked "slippery," according to the Architect's Newspaper.

OK, there's one element we've left out of the key ingredients: a blithe indifference to how things work in the real world. Fox doesn't say how close it is to a Home Depot, but over on the other side of the freeway, the Brondell FreshSpa Comfort+ is going for $44.98.* Comrade Mamdani didn't say how many bidets were in "a few," but there's a dual-temperature version for $76.99, with a limit of five per order. Discounts on a couple of Bio Bidet models take them down to the low $200 range. There's no indication in the story of whether Mamdani is feeling handy from all those years in that spacious rent-controlled apartment, or if the  -- how's that, New York Post? -- "petulant and ungrateful" first lady would want to help, but surely some comrade is available to help them keep the total under four (perhaps even three!) figures.

Now, to be objective and all, the 12th paragraph does provide some guesses from a "home-improvement cost and contractor marketplace": an "average cost" of $640 to install a bidet, though "costs can run as low as $40 or as high as $2,000." And, to be scrupulously fair, there is this concluding graf:

New York City's Department of Environmental Protection celebrated Mamdani's announcement, saying that "more bidets = fewer wet wipes."

But the real point, as the afternoon's lead story, is hard to overlook. Mister Trump is just trying to provide a few marble reading racks for all the national defense information that replaces "More Jokes for the John," and those pesky late-night comedians won't give him a moment's rest. You can see how the Fox audience would be refreshed and ready to return to the front lines in Grenland.

As long as we're on sourcing, though, enjoy these opening grafs from another Saturday Fox epic:

EXCLUSIVE: PANGUITCH, Utah — One of Tyler Robinson's last meals as a free man may have been at a roadside steakhouse off the beaten path, according to a Utah restaurateur who called in a tip to the FBI after news of the 22-year-old electrician's arrest in the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

Staff at a mom-and-pop restaurant in Panguitch, Utah, about three hours south of the crime scene in Orem, said a customer who looked like Robinson had eaten alone at the counter on the night of the murder.

"So the gal that served him said that he was quite quiet, kind of shy," the restaurant owner, who said he is not seeking attention about the encounter and asked not to be named, told Fox News Digital. "Usually, if somebody sits at our counter, they like to talk. And he sat on the counter and she said he really didn't want to talk, just wanted to eat and get out."

* 11:57 a.m. Eastern US, Saturday, Jan. 17, in the year of our Lord the 2,026th, if you're scoring along at home.
** $25 additional off your total order if you open a new card account!