[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It isn't often that truth gets spoken at Fox News, let alone a deep truth about the behavior of both movement conservatives and Fox itself. But UCLA poli-sci prof Mark Sawyer managed to slip one into the morning broadcast yesterday during a segment of America's Newsroom with Shannon Bream filling in for Megyn Kelly.

The topic was the so-called "Ground Zero mosque", and Sawyer was crossing swords with radio talker Ben Ferguson, who seems incapable of anything beyond basic talking-points regurgitation.

Bream pointed to the mosque organizers' message of healing the wounds of 9/11 and wondered how that message got lost in the uproar. Sawyer, of course, couldn't help but chortle:
Sawyer: It's been lost because after that Laura Ingraham interview, you guys decided in your summer of racial resentment in the Republican Party, that you were going to whip this up, along with the New Black Panther Party, along with Shirley Sherrod, along with a bunch of other phony stories to get people all stirred up. And that's the point. Nothing's wrong with her message. Exactly what she's saying is exactly the America that we should all want to live in. Good on Sawyer. I love it when someone says what needs saying, because it doesn't happen enough on teevee. (Of course, Ferguson not only couldn't respond, he then displayed his usual sensitivity by dismissing concerns that the mosque organizers were now getting death threats -- because hey, it happens all the time, right?)

Mind you, he limited the observation to Republicans -- but let's face it, everything he said was equally true about Fox News' behavior. Indeed, as we increasingly see via the money trail, Fox and the GOP are joined at the hip these days.