Roger Ailes (cc photo: US Army/Christopher Tobey)
Roger Ailes, the man who pioneered “alternative facts,” is dead. During the first five years of Fox News—which was built almost single-handedly by Ailes’ genius—I was a regular on-air contributor/panelist there. I dealt with his right-wing lieutenants plenty, but only met Ailes once, at a Fox News “Holiday Party.” The invite did not call it a “Christmas Party.” It was one of hundreds examples of hypocrisy at the TV channel that would soon launch the “War on Christmas” hoax.
Fox News was created in Ailes’ image—a channel that preached family values while subjecting women employees to intense harassment and body-shaming. Before Ailes launched Fox News with Rupert Murdoch’s millions, he was executive producer of Rush Limbaugh’s syndicated TV show—which once displayed a photograph of Chelsea Clinton while Limbaugh referred to her as the “White House dog.” She was 13 years old at the time.
I wrote this in my book Cable News Confidential:
I met Ailes once at a Fox News holiday party. If you knew nothing about him, this short, pudgy, balding fellow might appear cuddly, almost huggable, like a nice old uncle you’d nickname Jolly Roger.
Looks can be deceiving. Ailes was the media consultant for Bush Sr.’s vicious 1988 campaign that linked Democratic candidate Mike Dukakis to black rapist Willie Horton. “The only question,” Ailes remarked, “is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it.” Lee Atwater, his partner in the campaign, said that Ailes has “two speeds—attack and destroy.”
So Rupert Murdoch was putting Ailes in charge of a TV network during the reign of Bill Clinton, whom Ailes scorned as “the hippie president.” Given his genius with 30-second TV attack ads, imagine what Ailes could do 24/7.
What Ailes accomplished from 1996 until last year was a political/media revolution. As much as I hate to admit it, I can’t think of a single individual who’s had more impact on our country’s politics over the last 20 years. There would have been no Trump presidency without the decades of disinformation spewed by Fox News (and talk radio allies) to millions of voters—on issues from Christmas to immigrants to abortion, from economics to “socialist” Obama to “liberal media bias.”
I learned from my five years on-air at Fox News that its viewers were a fanatical bunch. Not serious readers or thinkers, but ardent voters. Years before pro-Trump “fake news” hoaxes were shared by millions on the Internet during the 2016 campaign, Ailes had reached his audience of voters with cable TV’s version of fake news. It matters that millions of hardcore activists and voters are operating from a worldview where racial minorities, women, immigrants, foreigners and terrorists have the upper hand against beleaguered white males, the depleted US military and persecuted corporations (I mean, “job creators”).
Perhaps Jon Stewart said it best in 2001 when The Daily Show earned a Peabody Award, given for excellence in television without any specific categories. Jon Stewart accepted the award by joking that he had won in the “News Parody” category: “There was not much competition this year. It was just us and Fox.”
Given how viciously Ailes attacked the Dukakis campaign in 1988, it’s amazing to me that Dukakis’ campaign manager, Susan Estrich, would have wanted to be Ailes’ lawyer, defending him in recent years. And given how ineptly she and her client Dukakis fought back in 1988, it’s just as amazing to me that Ailes would have wanted to have her defending him as his lawyer recently.
Both got offers they couldn’t refuse from *Poppy “Vic Damone” ! See below v
Any wagers on the likelihood that “the liberal media” will be oh so circumspect in their retrospectives of his repugnant reign?
Sorry I can’t go to his funeral, but I’l be sure to water the flowers on his grave, in a most fitting manner
‘No One Did More to Debase US Politics’ – so, he was responsible for torture, of aggressive war, of genocide?
FAIR’s lost its sense of proportion and its credibility
Sad
Are torture and genocide political ? WTF are you talking about ?
By and large, yes. Without FOX it’s fair to wonder how successful neocon propagandists would have been in their desperate push to find some new global threat to replace the Soviet nuclear-tipped ICBMs decommisioned they and all the other extremely well funded “profesionals” at the CIA, NSA, etc., etc., failed to anticipate the collapse of the USSR.circa 1990. The deaths resulting from their ability to sell Americans on the patently absurd notion that terrorism is a threat so dire that maintaining Cold War levels of defense spending is justified….. would likely have never even gotten off the ground without Ailes 24/7 propoganda efforts at FOX News.
E卍CEPT Poppy Bush !
Fox News is nothing more than a mobilizer for the Republican party to get White, older, Conservative Americans angry enough to get out to vote to “defend their country.” This plays directly into the hands of corporate powers that set up their candidates to win and pass corporate friendly legislation against the good of the public. The Democrats have become no better themselves, always perpetuating Trump hate to hide the fact that they lack a solid policy agenda. The goal is to get Liberals angry enough to mobilize for the Democrats, only for the Dems to do the same Neo-Liberal policy the GOP would have done. Sound familiar?
Both parties hold our conservative/liberal values hostage, sounding off through major media outlets like MSNBC and Fox News, and making us trade-off our best economy interests for lip service protection at best. It will only continue until the economy collapses and people finally get it through their heads that corporate-sponsored politicians, Red or Blue, never had their best interests in mind.
I can’t recommend Mr.Cohen’s superb book Cable News Confidential enough, as well as FAIR’s books on Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and donating generously to FAiR and getting their magazine Extra. Keep up the brilliant mythbusting FAIR! and Yes Fox News the epitome of fake news.