Sadly, the headline here is not a joke. Not in the literal sense, anyway. Nor is it even an actionable parody.

After taking a pratfall for suing Al Franken’s Recent Book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Fox threatened to sue Matt Groening and his animated TV show, The Simpsons, for airing a parody of the Fox News ticker (“Do Democrats cause cancer?”).

Alas, The Simpsons is owned by… Fox. They almost sued their own TV show for parodying their own TV show.

The Simpsons avoided getting sued, but now Fox has a new rule banning such a parody news-ticker. Why? Because, they say, “it might confuse viewers into thinking it’s real news.”

On The Simpsons?

These people need help.

In other Fox News news, Fox has declared itself worthy of the title “Fair and Balanced.” Why? Because they hired Chris Wallace. My first reaction to that was, “Who?” After looking around on the net, I found that people were saying he was a liberal, mostly because of the story about Fox News, though some contended he had conservative leanings. So it’s a bit confusing how the hiring of a single maybe-liberal interviewer now signals that the vastly right-leaning network is now “balanced.” Or maybe they were commenting on how Wallace himself has declared Fox to be “balanced.” Gee whiz, a new hire speaking well of his new bosses? Go figure!