Fox Wins The Big One

GIVE ME A BREAK, I WAS 14 Married With Children-era Applegate Back in 1987, a tyrannical Australian bent on world domination became a citizen of this country to fulfill his dream of starting a fourth major television network. While Fox struggled at first, the popularity of The Simpsons and the eventual acquisition of the rights to televise NFL games gave the network growing clout and credibility. As the nation continued to get stupider, Fox was the perfect place in which Americans could dumb even further down after a hard day's work searching for naked pictures of celebrities on the Internet. And, if I may interject a personal note, Fox was responsible for teaching a boy in the first throes of sexual development the mixture of joy and shame one feels when masturbating about Christina Applegate. Today, Rupert Murdoch's vision has paid off: "With a strong finishing kick from American Idol, Fox captured the distinction of America's most popular television network for the first time since it began operation." Once unstoppable powerhouse NBC remains mired in fourth place, so expect Jeff Zucker to get another inexplicable promotion.