Yes, my ass is fair and balanced. At least as fair and balanced as Fox News. I opened up Google News today to check the goings-on, as I usually do at lunchtime, and discovered a section at the top of the page regarding this week’s “likely” announcement of Al Gore as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. As usual, Google picked up headlines from a variety of sources.

CNN offers us Gore to learn whether he’ll win Nobel Peace Prize.

CBS News offers the somewhat more leading (and perhaps slightly biased in its own right — er, left) Could Nobel Prize Spur Gore To Run In ’08?

And, good ol’ (boy) Fox News gives us a commentary from some guy named Greg Gutfeld (great name, BTW) with the interesting headline Does Al Gore Deserve to Win the Nobel Peace Prize? Well, does he? Let’s see what Mr. Gutfeld has to say on the matter:

Al Gore is a heavy favorite to win the Nobel Peace Prize this Friday. The reason: His relentless nagging about the environment — as well as his awesome backrubs, which he performs shirtless.

Um, yeah. That’s great. And it just gets more ridiculous and offensive from there. But the bottom line for me with such flippant global warming denial is this: why are you fighting so hard to deny that this is happening? What’s in it for you? Even if the situation is not as bad as the more alarmist end of the spectrum paints it to be, there are still plenty of reasons why pollution is bad for the environment, and bad for us. This utter disregard for the planet we live on and its sustainability for future generations is abhorrent. Not to mention the fact that we’re going to run out of petroleum in this century anyway, so there’s more than one reason to move beyond our reliance on fossil fuels.

So is this stupidity the extent of Fox’s coverage of the story? I checked their home page to find out. Turns out this commentary didn’t bubble up to the surface (yet somehow it attracted the attention of Google’s news aggregating algorithm… and yes, Al Gore did invent the “Al Gore Rhythm” [sorry, I couldn’t resist]), but the following items did:

• Al Gore’s ‘Exciting, Urgent Mission’
• British Court Rules Gore Film Exaggerated Climate Claims
• FAST FACTS: Al Gore’s Nine Convenient Climate Untruths

I’ll leave it to you to pursue the matter further. I’m already feeling dirty. It’ll be interesting to see how my search engine placement is affected by so many links to Fox News, though.