FOX FLACKS PATTON CRAP

I've been seeing thread after thread after thread after thread at Free Republic promoting a parody video at YouTube in which a General Patton imitator talks about how vitally necessary the war in Iraq and all the other components of the Bush foreign policy are, and how certain our victory in Iraq is if Harry Reid doesn't screw it up -- and now I see that the ever-objective, strictly nonpartisan Fox News Channel has decided the video is newsworthy, so newsworthy that it deserves to be mentioned on FoxNews.com's front page:

'Old Blood and Guts' Reappears in a New YouTube Role

Maybe the White House should roll out "Old Blood and Guts" the next time it tries to explain why the U.S. is fighting in Iraq.

A video posted on YouTube features the well-known scene from the movie "Patton," with George C. Scott standing in front of an enormous American flag.

This time, however, the famous World War II general isn't urging his troops to defeat the Nazis on the eve of the Allied invasion of France -- this version features the voice of comedian Mike Kaminski delivering a Patton-like explanation of why the U.S. is fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, against Al Qaeda, and the danger posed by an Iran possessing nuclear weapons....

The parody video is awful, of course -- though I must say that, in among its denunciations of liberalism and rants about flabby video game players, it contains my favorite bit of advice ever from a right-winger about how to hasten the end of the war, a sort of "Just Say No" for people stuck in a living hell:

Now, I say to the Iraqi citizens that if you know of people planning insurgency, stop them! If you see or hear about someone planting a roadside bomb, stop them! Shoot those bastards in the guts! Report their activities! That is the only way to build a truly great nation! The people must get involved and take it back, just as Americans did against the British in the 1700s!

Er, dude? In Iraq, we're the British. And Iraqis are shooting insurgents in the guts; it's called "sectarian violence."

It's impossible to watch the George C. Scott Patton speech, of course, without thinking of real soldiers shedding real blood ("Now, some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it.... When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do"). By contrast, it's impossible to watch this parody without knowing for certain that it was made by a Cheeto-eater who's never spent a day in the military (and he was born in 1966, so he's still not too old to enlist) -- though he did work on the military-themed video games "Medal of Honor" and "Annihilation."

So, is Fox plugging the parody

(a) because it's responding to the power of viral video in a Web 2.0 era?
(b) because it's carrying water for the Bush administration, as usual (all this being a coordinated propaganda effort by Karl Rove)?

or

(c) because it's hoping the parody will inspire consumers to buy a few of Fox's Patton DVDs?

You decide.