Stephan:   The strategy being pursued by the Teabagger candidates, arguably the least qualified and most ethically compromised slate of candidates in living memory, has been to not talk to the press. They only appear on Fox New's agitprop propaganda channel. This is a new and very dangerous trend, and I am amazed that more has not been made of it. It is impossible for ordinary voters to dig out and pursue lies, contradictions, and frauds perpetrated by candidates. If candidates don't talk to the press, don't answer questions about their backgrounds and positions, how can voters know enough to make an informed choice? Put another way: how can a democracy properly function? And while I am on the subject, let me explain why I believe Fox News is qualitatively different from the other cable networks. Certainly MSNBC has a liberal orientation, and CNN tries to be neutral although, because of Anderson Cooper, it has a bias for the life-affirming (which some think of as liberal, which is an interesting comment in itself). But none of the other cable channels routinely coordinate with a single party, nor do they donate large sums of money to a single party; nor does any other news network have senior executives actively involved in SuperPacs that are quite blatantly trying to buy the U.S. government; nor does any other network have actual potential presidential candidates as news commentators. Every single currently credible Republican candidate, who is not presently in a public office, with the exception of Mitt Romney, is on the payroll of Fox. Any one of these things is unprecedented in our history; collectively this represents a direct assault on the role of the press in a free society. To understand Fox News, one would have to go back to the Soviet Union, and its control of media, to find a parallel model.