Rush Limbaugh. Citizens United. The Constitution. Evangelical Christians. Tax cuts. Republicans. Ann Coulter. Guns. The Founding Fathers (those rich, old, privileged white guys who formed our government). School Choice. Money in Politics (unless, you know, it is hundreds of millions coming from labor unions and billionaire socialists). Meritocracy. Abstinence. Fossil Fuels. Ann Coulter. The South.

Arguably, any and all of these things fall below Fox News on the list of Things Liberals Hate With a Burning Passion.

Which means that a recent poll from Quinnipiac has liberal ideologues pulling their hair out. According to Quinnipiac, Fox News, which 29% of Americans name as the most trustworthy network, either network or cable, has outpaced CNN (22%), CBS News and NBC News (both at 10%), ABC News (8%), and MSNBC (7%) as the most trusted news source on television. The same poll found that respondents believe that information provided now by news shows are less trustworthy (48%) than several decades ago, when news was dominated by the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) and later, with the addition of CNN.

In fact, MSNBC’s viewership has dropped so low that a recent post on the Fox News Facebook page about a toddler surviving a car crash and 14-hours in an icy river had more “likes” (60,673) than MSNBC had average viewership for the latest reporting period (55,000). For fans of the rabidly leftist MSNBC, that has got to be galling.

Journalism in general has been falling out of trust with the American public for quite some time now, which may explain the very low markings for NBC News (which lost 700,000 viewers after the revelations that news anchor Brian Williams had been exaggerating his bravery and heroism when inserting himself in news stories), and CBS News (which lost a good bit of credibility after revelations of forged documents published by Dan Rather in an attempt to bring down former President George W. Bush).

Of course, in the past, there were no other news sources to challenge the narratives provided by the Big Three, and it was not until the rise of talk radio, Fox News, and internet-based journalists and pundits (the infamous “pajama media”) that we began to get alternative perspectives and a forum for everyday people to debunk mainstream media claims (it was a document supposedly from Bush’s military record which brought down Rather, when it was discovered that the font of the document was developed with the advent of word processing, and did not exist on the typewriters that would have produced that document).

It is this platform for conservative viewpoints which has the political Left so disgusted, which proves true the old quote by William F. Buckley that “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” The Left hates the fact that Fox News exposes their lies, hypocrisy, and liberal slant to the news, and that is just in the news coverage. That doesn’t even include commentary and punditry like Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, and Greta van Sustren.

So loathed and feared by liberals is Fox News that Barack Obama, the de facto Leader of the Free World and Community-Organizer-in-Chief, does not dare appear on the channel to face their fearsome reporters and commentators, though he has repeatedly vilified Fox News in speeches and interviews with other news outlets. He has called Fox News an organization with a viewpoint that is “ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.”

Get that? Fox News is so powerful that it can slow economies and destroy a country’s middle class with its nefarious influence! When still a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama whined about Fox News, lamenting “I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls,” Obama told me. “If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me, right? Because the way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?” (The tone of that quote seems to indicate incredulity at the claim, but that sounds like a spot-on description to me).

Obama has given interviews to Rolling Stone magazine, the leftist ladies of The View, the Daily Show, David Letterman, and a DayGlo lipstick wearing YouTube celebrity best known for trying to eat her way out of a bathtub full of fruit loops and milk. But he won’t face Fox News, and uses them as a scapegoat for much of his unpopularity.

Now, I don’t actually have a dog in this fight. I gave up watching televised news shows years ago, other than the occasional Sunday morning news show when I am sick and stay home from church. All of them have to present their stories breathlessly and with urgency in order to out-sensationalize their competitors. I much prefer the feel of a newspaper in my hands, or the online articles I’ve printed out to be read with a highlighter and a red pen, so that I can highlight passages and makes notes of claims to verify.

But for sheer entertainment purposes, it is hard to beat watching liberals cry and rage against the popularity of Fox News (and other conservative media outlets), whining and lamenting that the rest of America can’t be as smart as smart as they are, and can’t see through Fox’s spin, lies, and general calumny. There is finally a counterweight to the mainstream, liberal media which generally act as sycophantic lapdogs for Democrats and leftist luminaries, and the world is much better for it.