In 2009, when media critic and former CBS News journalist Bernard Goldberg wrote A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media, he could hardly have imagined that the outrageous media malfeasance he was writing about would one day be the new normal.

But it is.

“Never in my memory,” he wrote back then, “were so many journalists so intent on effecting change. … Sure, mainstream journalists always root for the Democrat. But this time it was different. This time journalists were not satisfied merely being partisan witnesses to history. This time they wanted to be real players and help determine the outcome. This time they were on a mission, a noble, historic mission, as far as they were concerned. In fact, I could not remember a time when so many supposedly objective reporters had acted so blatantly as full-fledged advocates for one side — and without even a hint of embarrassment.”

Does that sound like something he wrote more than a decade ago? Or something he might’ve written just a few minutes ago?

We’ve written plenty about the Leftmedia’s bias over the years. Plenty, too, about its efforts to prop up the pathetic campaign of the cognitively challenged Joe Biden. But as Election Day draws nearer, and President Donald Trump remains firmly in the fight, the desperation of the Fourth Estate — or is it a fifth column? — becomes ever more palpable.

“The contrast between what Trump [is being] asked and what Biden is being asked is striking,” wrote Politico columnist and lifelong lefty Jeff Greenfield in an outburst of unbridled honesty, later noting, “This is not exactly getting him ready to face tough questions from a Chris Wallace or Jake Tapper (should he decide to [debate President Trump]).”

We wonder, though: Will Wallace actually do his job in the upcoming presidential debate? Will he actually ask tough questions of both candidates? We’ll find out on Tuesday, September 29.

Lost in that brief Greenfield tweet is his throwaway parenthetical at the end: should he decide to do so. Can you imagine an ostensibly independent army of journalists allowing a Republican challenger to decide not when but if he’ll face their questions? This has moved well beyond mere bias; it’s now activism. And it’s robbing the American people of their chance to fairly and accurately assess the candidacies of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

“The first thing we do,” says the modern-day Bard of our sweetest dreams, “let’s kill all the journos.”

Last Thursday, for 75 infuriating minutes, Biden was tossed one softball after another while CNN’s Trump-hating Anderson Cooper sat on his hands. Two nights earlier, however, President Trump was ambushed by a lineup of (ahem) uncommitted voters in Philadelphia. And when they weren’t letting him have it, former Clinton adviser and current ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos was.

NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck put some numbers behind what every honest viewer of last Thursday’s travesty could already sense: “Biden faced 16 total audience questions with 13 coming from Democrats to just three Republicans. When it came to the questions themselves, six were left-leaning, five neutral, and five right-leaning. And perhaps most notably, Biden had a friendly host [in Cooper].”

Houck continued, “In contrast, the President constantly battled [Stephanopoulos] while taking questions from 12 audience members. Of that group, four voted for him in 2016, three voted for Hillary Clinton, one for Jill Stein, two that didn’t/couldn’t vote, and one was undefined during the 90-minute program. Unlike Biden, Trump’s audience questions were heavily skewed with eight from the left, five neutral, and only one right-leaning.”

Joe Biden, by now, has gotten used to this. For months now, ever since he wrapped up the Democrat nomination, the media has been cleaning up his mess like the guy who shuffles around behind the circus elephant.

It’s a weird circus, though, and an unsettling one. The Babylon Bee tries manfully to find some humor in it. But these clowns who call themselves journalists aren’t even pretending to be funny.