Updated

Happy ninth birthday, FOX News Channel: that is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo."

Business Week reports that New York Times editor Bill Keller said that this network's fair and balanced slogan is "the most ingeniously cynical slogan in media marketing."

Now we all know Keller and The Times resent FOX News, because we keep an eye on them. The recent Geraldo fracas pretty much defines The New York Times. It took them three weeks to correct an obviously bogus story.

But imagine a country without the FOX News Channel, where The Times and other committed left wing newspapers, along with CNN and the network news divisions, pretty much set the information agenda in the USA. Imagine that scenario.

Conservatives and traditional Americans would be almost completely shut out. Nine years ago in 1996, FOX News began with few million subscribers. Ted Turner tried everything to kill us, including keeping us out of New York City and other major markets, but we prevailed.

And now, we not only beat CNN, but all the other cable news channels combined. Obviously millions of Americans and folks all over the world like this network, but Bill Keller and his pals hate us even on our birthday.

The reason is that fanatical partisans don't want diversity of opinion or spirited debate. They only want to hear their own beliefs echoed. Anything else they attack.

Maria Arana, an editor at The Washington Post says, "The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions. We're not very subtle about it at this paper: If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat."

Well, Ms. Arana is telling the truth. But The Washington Post at least tries to be fair on its news pages. And the other papers don't even fake it.

Here at FOX News, we employ all kinds of people. My staff's about equally divided between conservatives and liberals. The propagandists on the left, however, would have you believe we are group think Republicans.

So I have a question for them. What do Tom DeLay, Vice President Cheney, Louis Freeh, Samuel Brodman and Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff all have in common? Well, they're all Republicans. And they all will not come on “The Factor”.

Why? Most of them are afraid of the questioning, that's why. And if we were shilling for the right, why would they be afraid?

So happy birthday to us. It has been said that a person is defined by the caliber of his or her enemies. If that's true, FOX News is in pretty good shape at nine years old.

And that's "The Memo."

The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day

You would expect tempers to be short in New Orleans after the folks, all the folks have been through down there. But three New Orleans police officers may have over done it.

Apparently a 64-year-old man -- there he is -- became intoxicated and the cops roughed him up. He is a big guy. All right. You can see that.

All the while an Associated Press TV camera was taping the situation. Now when police figured that out they confronted the producer: Rich Matthews. -- You see him there in the white hat. They told him what they thought of him. And continued to get rough, pounding the intoxicated 64-year-old guy.

Obviously, this is not the way to handle a situation like this. Cops are facing battery charges. They have pleaded not guilty. They've also been suspended. Ridiculous? Apparently so.