Finally, someone actually does a real profile on this petty, vindictive, self-centered ass who lives to accumulate power and doesn’t seem to give much thought to what it actually does to America:
And so, Mr. Ailes, Esquire has a question, on behalf of other average Americans: What kind of man wins all the time? What kind of man gives his country, in roughly this order, Mike Douglas, Richard Nixon, Tom Snyder, Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” the Willie Horton ad, the ad in which Michael Dukakis rides around in a tank and looks like a chipmunk, the presidency of George H. W. Bush, CNBC, Fox News (upstart-insurgent edition), Fox News (airwaves-of-the-empire edition), Fox News (“Obama sux” edition), and Fox News (Tea Party edition)? More pointedly, what kind of man figures out at age twenty-seven how to use television to legitimize Richard Nixon and then at age seventy to legitimize Sarah Palin?
The writer’s correct about something else, too: Roger Ailes is a genius. Fox News has a much better product (not in terms of bias, or correct facts, but in presentation and depth), and I wish liberal programming was smart enough to take a page from his book.
When a friend was at my house the day of the Tucson shootings, he was a little surprised that I had Fox News on in the background. “When something happens,” I told him, “they just put a lot more resources into the story.” And they do. I don’t always like their perspective, but they have enough straight reporting that I can tolerate the bias.
But no, I can’t stand even a minute of O’Reilly, Beck or the other opinionators.
