No joke

I always thought that Fox News' use of the "fair and balanced" moniker was a cute in-joke.

Yet, the current round of salary-setting by the administration is routinely explained with the same rhetoric.

Hubristic actions on Wall Street and in Washington DC combined in ways that ended up being a witches brew (tired of "perfect storm") which ended up being a financial crisis which ended up prompting an economic recession which ended up eliciting panicky bail-outs which ended up with third-party pay-setting which ended up with mock-serious "fair and balanced" explanations all around. But this time no tongue-in-cheek.