Though an irate Fortune chief Andy Serwer called us last week to demand we retract our claim that his magazine was about to deliver a blowjobby piece on CNBC, the current issue's Jessi Hempel article on the network does little to counter our report. Fortune is in love with CNBC!

To be perfectly fair, many of Fortune's bullet points are on target: The launch of Rupert Murdoch's Fox Business Network hasn't been much of an attack at all; ratings are, generally, up; income streams are fattening.

But the fawning over CNBC charge Mark Hoffman, that we imagined Hempel would deliver, is clearly there: "Mark Hoffman has added edge and emotion to a network that was heavily criticized in the run-up to the tech bust for its rah-rah business take on the news." Adds Jim Cramer: "Mark is remarkable because he says, 'Tell me what you need.' And we get it." Just get on his leg and start humping already.

Then again, Hoffman has overseen profits skyrocket 36 percent since taking over in 2005, so maybe he is entirely crush-worthy. Or they got some awesome new informericals to play on Saturdays. Fortune even gives Fox Business props: "On Martin Luther King Day the network aired live as the international markets melted down; CNBC stuck to its policy of airing taped programming when the U.S. markets close. And on Good Friday, FBN had live coverage when Standard & Poor's released a ratings cut of Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) and Lehman (LEH, Fortune 500). Again, CNBC wasn't live."

Ugh! Distinguishing between bias and fact-based favoritism is HARD.