This might sound odd, given all the Sturm und Drang from the right over Obama’s executive order to temporarily allow up to 5 million undocumented immigrants to stay in America without the threat of deportation. But I think that some of the Fox News hosts might be going a little soft on immigration.

Seven years ago, Geraldo Rivera and Bill O’Reilly had an epic, screeching, flesh-tearing brawl (a true must-see, below). The Geraldo v. Tucker Carlson bout on Fox & Friends this morning, however, was by comparison a gentlemen’s duel.

The cringe-inducing chryon of “Bamnesty” set the tone. After Geraldo, an informed and strong proponent of immigration reform, made an impassioned plea to accept the people who “clean our houses, mow our lawns, take care for our children, start businesses, and raise families,” Tucker was reduced to saying, with a bow-tie squareness, “I like immigrants. They are very hard working.”

Another bit of unexpected Fox softening came from Megyn Kelly shortly after Obama’s speech. She admitted that what Obama was ordering was not “amnesty,” as she and most Fox hosts have insisted in the past. As Media Matters puts it, she

acknowledged that the president is not actually pursuing “amnesty,” because “amnesty is citizenship and that’s not what [Obama] is talking about.” Kelly also explained how conservatives purposely misuse the word “amnesty” for political gain: “That’s a hot-button term that the right uses to sort of get people upset.”

But don’t think that Fox is going to actually have to re-write its glossary. Obama’s order might not legally be that dirty, bad A-word, she said, but “it amounts to amnesty.”

And here’s Geraldo and O’Reilly: