State Sen. Bernie Herpin (R-Colorado Springs) surprised me last week when he thanked right-wing talk-radio host Peter Boyles for being "fair and balanced."
Boyles immediately put his style of fairness and balance on display by calling Fox 31 reporter Eli Stokols a "Butt Boy."
Herpin and Boyles, who's a talker on Denver's KNUS 710-AM, were angry over Fox 31 Denver coverage of Herpin's statement that it was "maybe a good thing" that the Aurora movie-theater shooter had a 100-round magazine, allowing him to load 100 bullets in his gun at one time.
Asked by Boyles' about Stokols' coverage, Herpin said: "As a media person you know it's their job to sensationalize the news to attract readers and viewers and followers on their blogs."
"Fortunately, we have people like you that stand up for us, that provide both sides of the story in a fair-and-balanced way," Herpin told Boyles. "And I thank you for that."
"Well, you're kind," responded Boyles, who really truly expressed his "love" Herpin earlier in the interview.
After I tweeted Boyles' radio conversation with Herpin, "Missing Pundit" responded with "Live from Kenya," referring to Boyles' obsessive discussions on his radio show about birther topics, including Obama's birth certificate, birthplace, college degrees, and more.
Another recent high point of Boyles' fair-and-balanced work was his on-air encouragement of callers to commit voter fraud.
Boyles dropped the Butt-Boy bomb on Stokols, who's a widely respected political journalist, because Boyles believes Stokols does the bidding of "progressives."
What's Boyles' proof in this case? Unlike other journalists who covered Herpin's 100-round-magazine comment, Stokols didn't include the full context of Herpin's quote until the lower portion of Stokols' post, according to Boyles.
In reality, Stokols put the Herpin quote in a larger context. Then Stokols wrote: "Herpin was trying to say that larger magazines are less reliable, more prone to jamming up." And then he provided Herpin's full comment, along a video of it so people could watch for themselves.
That doesn't sound like reporting from a Butt Boy.