ASSIGNMENT FROM 60 MINUTES
By Bernice the Fly, Special Correspondent (Diptera Division)
Filed from a lampshade above the espresso machine in the FOX News boardroom
Lesley Stahl herself tapped me on the thorax and said, "Bernice, darling, it's time." With that, she handed me a press credential smaller than a conservative's compassion for the poor, and I buzzed off to FOX News—where truth doesn't merely die but must suffer ritual humiliation first.
The newsroom chilled me to my exoskeleton - colder than a Manhattan socialite's marriage. Fluorescent lights cast everyone in that sickly glow reserved for morgues and discount wedding venues. I nestled above the assignment board, though I needn't have bothered with discretion; in a building where people talk to imaginary liberals all day, no one notices one small fly.
The morning meeting began at what they call "patriot o'clock." A senior producer, whose necktie boasted both stars and stripes and what appeared to be ketchup, barked, "What's got heat?"
A junior staffer whispered, "The climate report?"
The room fell silent. Then someone muttered, "Only if it melts Hunter Biden's laptop."
Laughter erupted – dry and mechanical, like a symphony of cash registers. I realized then I hadn't infiltrated a news organization, but a theatrical production where the actors carried guns and the script came straight from a comment war between fourteen-year-old boys.
They rotated through sacred Fox buzzwords with the devotion of Catholics at rosary: "woke," "border," "cancel," and the verbal abomination "Bidenflation"—a term so awkward it would trip on a level floor.
"Can we do something about that professor who banned the word 'America'?" someone asked.
"Find a parent who'll cry about it," came the reply.
Ah, journalism! Where tears count as evidence and rage passes for sourcing.
An anchor glided in, his suit sharp enough to perform surgery, his smile shellacked with sincerity by the gallon. "What's our tone this week?" he asked, sipping something green that costs more than my monthly gin allowance.
"Outraged but chuckling," someone answered. "Like a man who discovered his neighbor drives a Prius."
They nodded gravely. I gathered they treat tone like a cocktail recipe—two parts indignation, one part smugness, garnish with flag pin.
Someone suggested covering a labor strike. The managing editor sighed, "Only if we frame it as lazy people wanting more money. No unions unless they're police or corrupting children."
"Trump speaks in Ohio tonight," announced a segment producer. "Can we run that live?"
"Of course," replied the boss, "but tape-delay it in case he strays."
"Strays where?"
"Into honesty."
The room erupted. I nearly fell from my perch.
I'd seen enough to last several lifetimes—or at least enough to make me wish I'd chosen to be born a wasp. I darted down to the desk of their fact-checker, a pallid creature hunched in the corner like the last gardenia at a funeral.
"Do they ever use you?" I inquired.
"Once," he sighed. "In 2019. I got confused and ended up at NPR."
As the day wore on, I watched them craft headlines with the delicacy of a butcher. A story about a drag queen reading hour transformed into an international crisis. A piece on housing shortages somehow concluded with "thanks, Obama."
I departed before sundown. Even a fly maintained standards, and mine crumbled somewhere between the third invocation of "real America" and a producer trying to rhyme "liberal" with "criminal."
I returned to 60 Minutes with a notebook full of propaganda and enough cynicism to start my own network. Lesley read my notes, sighed, and lit a cigarette with nothing but the fire in her eyes.
"Good work," she said.
I buzzed weakly in reply. I had journeyed into the belly of the beast and discovered the beast rehearsing.
But then, don't we all?