There’s this old joke about a guy’s first day in hell. He’s being given the orientation: Here’s where we keep the pitchforks. Here’s where we make the printers. Then the time comes to pick his eternal punishment. The first room is fire and brimstone, eternal agony. “That’s not for me,” the man says. The second is full of people being eaten by animals. “Pass,” he says. In the third room, he finds people sipping coffee while waist deep in excrement. “I think I can handle that,” he says. The door closes behind him as a demon yells, “Coffee break’s over! Back on your heads!”
I’m not naive enough to think that Jesse Walters came to Fox News during a proverbial break in their typical wallowing. He came on as a production assistant to former host Bill O’Reilly during the boom years of George W. Bush’s first term. Watters made a name as an liberal-needler, confronting progressive targets in the halls of congressional office buildings and peppering them with bad faith questions, and he’s since parlayed his willingness to be irritating into a decades-long career. Now nearing 50, there are signs that Watters is tiring of playing the enfant terrible, that he’s over standing on his head and then coming up to flash the requisite grin.
