Thought about this all day yesterday. Have something seriously anti-Ailes to say, did not want to say it in his obit thread and join the piss-on-his-grave party - why lefties gotta constantly re-prove the indecency with which righties see them is as mystifying as how proud righties are to have a stick up their butt - but its the people in this thread to whom i want to say it, so here goes.
For one, Ailes should be demonized for the harassment but, in the context of his life, holding that as the card against him is like being one of those who concentrate on Congress raising their own salaries instead of focusing upon their control of this country's vast fortunes.
Back to my point, though. I am one who considers Bobby Kennedy's assassination to be the most unfortunate American event of my lifetime. A guy i always hated as a kid - and i was barely a teen but political active, canvassed for McCarthy in '68 - as a cold-blooded, take-no-prisoners, political operative (and because hating a Kennedy was a cool thing for a punk kid to do in '60s Boston), but one undergoing an amazing transformation during his brief Presidential run, due mostly to what he saw poverty & race had really done to this country. His death - and he would have won, no matter what you hear - robbed us of a President who would have prevented Nixon, blocked a LOT of LBJ's policies (if only for spite), and given progressive America its first conservative voice. In what i've read about the RFK's revolution of outlook, he would have seen elevation of the classes in Schindler terms, every dollar wasted a sin against posterity, and that's a voice which would have properly built a bridge between the Old & New Americas, the Left & Right as well, that would have held against cynicism & divisiveness.
A Pollyanna view to be sure and wtf does it have to do with Roger Ailes?! I just wanted you to know how deeply i feel in that regard so you'll understand the upcoming.
I've known about Roger Ailes longer than all y'all. As i've recounted on this board a couple times before, I was at a party at the '80 Democratic Convention - guest of the chairman, who i'd become friendly with in '76 when i covered the campaign and he ran NY for Carter - that was crashed by a very young, very loaded Lee Atwater. Atwater was politics' first open rat####er and progenitor of much of the way politics is done these days. He bounced between letty enclaves at the party, laughing that the end was nigh for our ways and how Reagan was gonna smoke us and Ronnie, him and his media guy were gonna bring the house down on us for good & all.. He and his media guy (a young TV producer named Ailes) in fact saved GHWBush's bacon with the Willie Horton ad (knew who was behind it the second i saw it).
Atwater died young and Ailes decided to make his fortune in political media. After seeing the work of a French psychologist who became a hugely successful ad exec, Ailes came to the realization that all you gotta do to sell a fella anything is warm him up. Sex was already taken as a way to do so, what was nextmost? Rage, baby. Enrage, outrage, in a box, with a fox - blow em up real good. Brought Limbaugh to national attention, O'Reilly, Chris Matthews (yes, Ailes' first news network was America's Talking, which became MSNBC) even his Wall Street reporter, Jim Cramer, was more bombast than forecast. Roger Ailes made the fight - there's just us.....and enemies of us. To this day i dont really think the politics of it ever mattered to him, it was simply the thing folks got most worked up about.
And then there was Fox, truthiness, the institutional stasis megabusiness realized as the optimum condition for fleecing it up & down, and now the drunk uncle at the wheel, his governance second to his publicity. All Atwater, then Ailes.
My point? For decades, if i could go back and change anything in my time, it would have been to take the gun out of Sirhan's hand. The last few years, though, a new contender has arisen. Stopping Atwater/Ailes, the cynical relativization(?) of truth. I want my America back - the America that disagrees together, but works together just the same; the one where you take a stand before a side; the one without media-driven sheep & lemmings polluting every corner of culture; most importantly, the one that seeks & respects truth - that bad and, more than any entity, Ailes is responsible for taking it away.
G'ahead God. I never pointed a weapon in my life, but put one in my hand at that party 37 years ago and, knowing what i know now, i blow that loadie's head off and go looking for his fat, feel-em-up friend. RIP. -