Yeah, Fresh Air/Terry Gross is pretty caught up in her own bubble, if you ask me. She gets pretty feisty when guests challenge her from time to time, which I enjoy. (Good listening when that happens!)
Gross does not berate her guests. She can and does ask tough questions, but she's not emotionally aggressive.
Classic instance is her interview of O'Reilly, where he cut the mic and left the interview. There are lots of online mentions of this, though I'm not sure the episode itself is. See:
http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/terry-gross-soothingly-d...
http://www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/2003/031015.html
http://www.metafilter.com/28827/Terry-Gross-vs-Bill-OReilly
(Her interviews are almost never in-studio, so guests are typically remote, as in this case.)
At the same time, it's quite obvious that Gross is a massive fan of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, to the point of schoolgirl crush. I find it endearingly charming.
The few left wing commercial radio shows out there are no different from their ideological counterparts.
I'm a huge NPR fan (I literally sat in my car crying during Diane Rehm's final sign off), but I really can't take Terry Gross...