Land of the free, up to a point

The delicately balanced nature of the US media - or, if you believe Fox, the slavish devotion to those dangerously left-wing Democrats on the part of the main networks - seems to have been ruffled a little by the attempts of Randy Randall from No Age to wear an Obama tshirt on Craig Ferguson's late-night talk show. Randy explains:

After the rehearsals, the people from CBS said I couldn't wear the shirt. I threatened to walk off the set and not do the show. They would not budge. They said that it was because they had to give equal time. I told them to put up a Mccain t-shirt, or anything else they wanted, but they wouldn't do anything. Dean and I talked and we came to the conclusion that it was better to do the show and make a statement on national TV than just walk away. So I turned the shirt inside out and wrote free healthcare on it.

Funny thing is, this would have been understandable if it had been Britain - you could, at a stretch, argue that one side's t-shirt without a balance would be a violation of electoral law - but in America, the similar rule, the Fairness Doctrine was abolished about twenty years ago. Otherwise Fox News would implode, wouldn't it?

Still, well done Randy for making such a brave stand of, erm, not walking out the show but telling everyone about it afterwards.