Few moments in Fox News Channel history seem to sum up the network's dilemma -- or its singular claim to entertainment value -- more than the recent Bill Clinton episode.

The site was "Fox News Sunday," the public-affairs show hosted by Chris Wallace, the ABC News veteran who decamped for Fox in 2003. The guest was Clinton, who had agreed to his first-ever Fox interview, provided half of the time would be spent discussing his charity work.

But a few minutes in, when Wallace asked the former president why he "didn't do more to put bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business," Clinton leaned out of his chair and launched into a tirade, partly about his record in office, partly about the messenger.

"You did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me," he growled, demanding to know whether Wallace had asked the same question of Bush officials.

"Do you ever watch 'Fox News Sunday,' sir?" Wallace asked, when he could get a word in.

Clinton didn't say, but it didn't seem to matter. He answered his own question: "I don't believe you asked them that."

With Fox, for many viewers, what you believe is what you get. And many people, it's clear, believe in Fox completely. The network, which celebrated its 10th anniversary Saturday, has risen past the skeptics to dominate cable news ratings. Though its prime-time ratings have slipped of late, Fox still routinely trounces CNN. "Fox & Friends," the morning show, has ratings so strong that it has set a new goal: to beat the "Early Show" on CBS.

But as notable as the numbers -- and sometimes out of proportion to them -- has been Fox's effect on the TV landscape, not just the viewers it has drawn, but the devotion and antipathy. Only a network with clout would draw so many complaints and not-so-loving parodies.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has made a staple out of criticizing "The O'Reilly Factor," and Al Franken originally called his liberal "Air America" radio show "The O'Franken Factor." On Comedy Central, "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" routinely pokes fun at Fox's swirling graphics, and "The Colbert Report" stars an O'Reillyesque host, jingoistic and prone to self-aggrandizement.

Left-wing groups, meanwhile, keep feverish running tabs on the network's conservative guests and angles. "It's a right-wing, conservative, and, particularly, Bush White House propaganda mill," says Steve Rendall, a senior analyst at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a progressive media watchdog group.

Fox likes to tweak all of them back, in part with its in-your-face catchphrases: "America's Newsroom," "Fair and Balanced."

"Sometimes," says Bill Shine, Fox's senior vice president of programming, "we do that just to annoy the other anchors."

That's the sort of player Fox has become and the persona Clinton latched onto.

"You've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever," he told Wallace. In truth, it was just as easy to read the anchor's facial expression as bemusement. But Fox has created an image so clear, so defiant, that some find it hard to watch a single show without considering Fox as a whole -- or to watch Wallace or Brit Hume, another ABC News veteran, without thinking of O'Reilly. The network has a way, sometimes, of overshadowing itself.

Fox's producers and anchors vigorously deny any charges of political bias -- at least in the shows that don't feature O'Reilly or Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, who headline their own right-vs.-left evening talk show. But many within Fox, Wallace included, say the network succeeds because it offers a different perspective, with "different" defined variously as not centered in New York, or apart from conventional wisdom, or as a counterweight to a liberal bias that pervades other news operations.

Media watchers have compiled ample evidence that Fox covers news differently. The Center for Media and Public Affairs, based in Washington, compared "Special Report With Brit Hume" to similar shows across the dial and found that during the 2004 election cycle, John Kerry's overall TV coverage was nearly 60 percent positive, while George Bush's was more than 60 percent negative.

Except on Fox, that is. There, Kerry's coverage was 4-to-1 negative, and Bush's coverage was balanced.

The anti-Kerry statements didn't come from Hume or other Fox reporters, says Robert Lichter, the center's president, who does occasional paid work for Fox as a commentator. "The question is what kind of a mix comes out of the sources who are interviewed," Lichter said. "There's no question that Bush got more favorable coverage on 'Special Report' than did Kerry."

Fox's coverage of terrorism and the war in Iraq has also been markedly different, the center found. During the heart of the war, compared with the broadcast networks, Fox showed 50 percent fewer stories with images of civilian casualties. After 9/11, Fox featured far more discussions about terrorism than CNN did.

That approach to the subject was one reason David Clark, executive producer of "Fox & Friends," says he left a job at CNN to work for Fox around that time.

'"Personally, I'm not a Republican -- I'm an independent," Clark says. "This was right after 9/11, and the whole view CNN took on the war on terror seemed so out of whack with what this country was and what we were trying to do and the enemy we were trying to fight.

"And to be honest," he adds, "Fox is a hell of a lot more fun."