It must have been something I ate

I guess I put too much Szechuan spice in the stir-fry the other night, because I had the most awful nightmare …

I dreamed I was watching this YouTube debate on CNN among the GOP presidential hopefuls, you see, and it turned into a sort of partisan ambush where the real attacks didn’t come from among the rival candidates, but through the questions posed to them.
There was this retired general who not only got to ask them a “have you stopped beating your wife”-style question about gays in the military, but was the only person allowed to stand up live in the audience and make a speech about the issue. It turned out he was a “plant,” an activist who cochairs a support group for Hillary Clinton’s campaign – a fact that CNN, in a huge lapse of either ethics or intelligence or both, failed to disclose and few in the media bothered to note. He then told CNN that "these guys are just partisanly homophobic" (partisanly?), so he couldn't have actually been interested in their responses in the first place.
But oh, that wasn’t all. Cyber-question after cyber-question chosen by CNN came in the form of hostile “gotchas” from people who, as you could tell by their tone and demeanor, already knew they weren’t going to like any answer these candidates gave. There’s a reason: This was a Republican debate on Democratic terms. A Barack Obama supporter’s question led listeners to believe he was a member of the Log Cabin Republicans. A former intern for a Democratic House member asked about crop subsidies. A student who asked about “criminalizing abortion” posted a photo of herself wearing a John Edwards campaign shirt. And on and on.
But the most frightening was the question by a sneering guy from Dallas, sticking the spine of a copy of the Holy Bible into the lens of his Webcam and snippily demanding – as if to say, How can anyone be so stewpid – of the candidates, “Do … you … believe … EVERY … WORD … OF … THIS … BOOK!” Meanwhile, somewhere in the background I swear I heard Barbara Walters pleading with Jimmy Carter to “be good to us” …

Then I woke up in a sweat, and realized it must have been a dream – because, as we all know, there is no such thing as media bias.