Ugly Liberal Media Bias Infiltrates the 'Most Beautiful' List

Do you find Democrats better looking than Republicans? If so, you're in agreement with The Hill, which just published its annual list of the 50 most beautiful people on Capitol Hill. Numerically, it's not even close: 28 of the honorees are Democrats (including No. 5, Ben Dunham -- pictured here -- a 31-year-old environmental aide to New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg). And another two on the list say they lean in that direction. With three of the listees identifying themselves as independents, that leaves only 17 Republicans -- barely one-third of the total.

Having noticed this skew, I was just about to dial Rush Limbaugh and alert him to another blatant instance of liberal media bias when I decided to give The Hill's editor-in-chief, Hugo Gurdon, a chance to explain himself. Naturally, Gurdon claims there's "absolutely no political bias in it" -- just as you'd expect from a fiendishly brilliant practitioner of liberal media bias.

"All I can tell you the 50 are selected from their photographs without any attached information," says Gurdon, in a British accent that immediately gives him away as an unrepentant elitist. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder is our newsroom."

If there's a slant, he says, it's probably because there are simply far more Democrats working on Capitol Hill at the moment. "The Democrats have substantial majorities in both chambers, and they control all the committees," he says. "If everyone were just picked entirely at random, you would get more Democrats than Republicans."

Draw Your Own Conclusions

This is the place when your typical shifty-eyed pointy-bearded turtleneck-wearing Journolist member would point out that, while the last list from when Republicans still controlled Congress doesn't seem to be available online anymore, the one from 2008, when they still held the executive branch, did feature slightly more Republicans than Democrats (23 vs. 22, with five declaring no affiliation). But since I'm not some kind of Media Matters lackey, I'll just leave you to draw your own conclusions.

As always, I'll give the last word to my guest, Hugo Gurdon: "This is a piece of summer fun which we do each year, and the question about which party they're attached to doesn't come into it."

Spoken like a true Marxist.