Fox & Fear

I told you just a few days ago that I’d started reading a new (to me) British newspaper The Guardian. I didn’t have to wait long for that to pay some dividends.



Roger Ailes and the rise of Fox News

Even Rupert Murdoch is afraid of Roger Ailes, the paranoid boss of Fox News. But 'the Chairman' is using his power to make Americans more rightwing, more ignorant and ever more terrified

Catchy title, huh? It’s not nearly as eloquent as the rest of the article.

”In place of the logo for Fox News was a beneficent visage: the face of the network's founder. The man known to his fiercest loyalists simply as "the Chairman" – Roger Ailes.

"It was as though we were looking at Mao," recalls Charlie Reina, a former Fox News producer. The Foxistas went wild.”

In case you’ve never heard of the “cult of personality”, you might want to check it out.




(BTW, if you’ve never heard the song “Cult of Personality”, you might want to check it out too. Let’s just say it will “expand your horizons”.)

”To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that is held to the same standard of evidence as a political campaign attack ad – is to see a refraction of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican party.

I assume something different jumps out at everyone in a sentence that long. For me it was “white resentment”. That’s big down here in the Confederacy. I wish I could find a map of Fox News viewers. I would love to see the concentration of viewers in the South as compared to the rest of the country. Regardless, think about that “white resentment” remark and then think back to the early days of the Tea Party. (Please take the time to watch both videos at that link. They’re enlightening.) I can’t tell you the last time I saw a crowd this white.



Back to the article:

”And by incubating a host of potential Republican contenders on the Fox News payroll – including Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum – Ailes seems determined to add a fifth presidential notch to his belt in 2012. "Everything Roger wanted to do when he started out in politics, he's now doing 24/7 with his network," says a former News Corp executive. "It's come full circle."”

Oh yeah, this article is worth your time. If you’re pressed for time and you’ve already read the Rolling Stone article about Roger Ailes, you can skip it. But do send it to your Fox-watching friends. I don’t mind them being right wing, but I don’t think anyone should be more ignorant and terrified.

Don Brown
August 11, 2011