Tonight sees the premier episode of Fox News's answer to The Daily Show, the Half Hour News Hour. Two clips have been leaked onto the Internet; the first is a segment on much love Barack Obama gets from the press, while the second is the programme's opening, an imagined 2009 where Rush Limbaugh is President is President and Ann Coulter is the VP.

The Obama piece is a little odd; you wonder just how something so stilted and, well, unfunny could be considered a good idea for their first broadcast. To make it worse, it's not even all that funny. The second clip is just horrifying. Although I did get a chuckle out of Limbaugh's line about 'how the country's standing in the international community lies in ruins after two years of a Democrat Congress', though sadly, I don't think he was being ironic. Coulter somehow manages to be even worse.

I think the problem here is that the show's creators, 24's Joel Surnow and Enterprise's Manny Coto don't understand what The Daily Show is really about. It's true that the show leans a little to the left, but its purpose in life is to mock the news rather than to promote any pinko-commie agenda. And to say that The Daily Show doesn't mock Democrats shows that Surnow has never actually watched it (indeed, the recent Obanmania segments on TDS have all been much funnier than the sad attempt linked above). However, as it's a political satire show, you do expect it to attack those who actually have power rather than those who don't. But it spares no punches for Democrats, regularly has conservative guests on, and bears no resemblance to the show that Fox News seems to think is broadcast at 11pm on Comedy Central.

Regardless, I'll probably watch the whole thing tomorrow on YouTube just to see how bad it was…