Whatever Ailes was, Rush Limbaugh, was, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump are - remember who helped enable them, empower them, and give them credibility. I certainly see Rupert Murdoch on the scene. I call him "the antichrist of journalism" and that's exactly what he was and is.
Much as it gives me heartburn at 4:30 in the morning, thank you dear Robert for that illuminating History lesson on the POS that was Roger Ailes and the History of Fox News and their cohorts of Rush, Glenn B. etc.
I despise them all with a passion I cant put into words for the damage they've done to the peoples and Democracies here and around the world. They've supported and enabled a tyrant and have helped bring America to her knees. The non-stop lies, the gaslighting, the mismanaged covid crisis, the "state-TV" during the Trump administration, the support of the "Big Lie", I could go on and on. And on. It is beyond shameful. It should be criminal. Yet Fox is still played on Military bases around the world. Excuse my language but W.T.F.?!!!
There is a special place is hell reserved for Rupert Murdoch. Roger Ailes is waiting for him I'm sure. I'm sorry you had to deal with him at all Professor Reich. You are way too good for them anyway. They don't even pretend to be "Fair and Balanced" anymore. They just keep spewing their garbage day after day after day.
We've got a lot of work to do dear friends before November but we CAN do this!! President Biden is on the offensive and Trump is losing ground daily. He is running on a losing platform and he goes to trial in less than 3 weeks. So keep the faith everyone!!! We will 🏆 this Battle once and for all come November 5th!!! ❤️🇺🇸💙
I think comparisons with Goebbels are not terribly far off the mark. Poisoning a nation for profit is not much worse than ideological evil. But, as the Dude might say, that's just my opinion, man.
Ailes sexually harassed my friend in High School. We hung out at KYW- TV at the Tom Synder Show - and it was in Philadelphia. My friend came forward to Gretchen’s lawyer, and one newspaper wrote of her horrible experience in Ailes office at KYW-TV. For years I have been exposing him. I called producers when he was interviewed on TV. I met with tv Pioneer Jack Rhodes who was well aware of what Roger Ailes had been up to for years. Many knew. What stills makes me sick is that Ailes was paid when he left FOX. It was wrong as is the arbitration clause in the contract that prevented the case from going to trial.
Thank you, Robert. The Republicans, GOP, MAGA, Conservatives - however they manifest around the world - are saturated with the worst of human behaviour and appetites. Ailes and Murdoch are two examples of the utterly despicable corruption that can be expressed in "human" beings.
The sick monster Rupert Murdoch (especially amplified by Ailes) has done more to destroy civilisation than anyone since Hitler and Stalin. All for money and ego.
Aides was nothing but a bully scumbag! A despicable disgusting deplorable and what he did to their viewers should have been criminal! Praying the next lawsuit will be the end of Faux News for ever! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 remember their FCC license is for ENTERTAINMENT, …not news! And should be revoked!
Amazing bit of history, Prof. Reich. Thank you. Let me pick one little bit of legume from your rich (reich?) plate. You say: "In the 1980s, Ailes’s politics grew more conservative, along with those of the Republican Party." I choose not to call the repugnicants 'conservative.' To me, conservative means people who want to keep things as they are. To me, the repugnicants and their magabrains and other camp followers are RADICALS, and dangerous at that. Nobody did more to harm the word 'liberal' than drug addict Rush Limbaugh (who admitted scouring the streets at night looking for another illegal Oxycontin fix when his drug dealers failed to come through). Rush Limbaugh turned 'liberal' into a hate word for simple magabrains, just as (actually the vast majority of US citizens) are trained to become violent when you even mention the word socialism. Civilized, humane health care is 'evil socialism.' Wrong, it is a basic human right. Our national corporate for profit wealth-care mafia is a crime against humanity. It's like slavery in the old South: most people seem to buy into it. We are the only industrialized nation where the wealth scare mafia robs millions of their pensions and savings, and bankrupts millions, while actually causing many thousands of bad medical outcomes including death (murder). The point of my comment ultimately is that words are what we make of them. Going back, as I often do, to the morays (morae) of the ancient Romans in their long-successful republic and (with some twists and turns) democracy... what counts is CENTRISM and MODERATION. A great example is that after the Romans expelled their last king (Tarquin the Arrogant) in 509 BCE, they set up a complex system that included magistrates and lesser civil servants. Every office but one had two men assigned, who had the power to veto each other. That meant theoretically that no man (it was all men, sorry ladies) could be utterly corrupt and run away with the show. Oops, except for one provision: the office of dictator. The city of Cincinnati, Ohio is named for the legendary Cincinnatus, a simple farmer who was ploughing his field, when a delegation from the Senate arrived and informed him that he had been chosen Dictator in a national emergency to defeat some of Rome's many deadly early enemies. Accordingly, Cincinnatus went to the city (Rome), put on his plumed helmet, and led an army out to defeat the enemy. He then immediately put his plumed hat aside, went back to his field, and resumed plowing as a simple and humble farmer. That is one example of many of the parables told by the early Romans to explain their morae (the ways of the ancestors) that drove their sense of morality. One can argue all day, but our Founding and Framing Fathers in the 1700s CE adored this stuff and made many of our institutions an echo of the world's longest-lasting democracy. Oh yes, and then doom struck. The office of dictator was supposed to be tightly controlled by the Senate, and not last more than six months at most, or as long as the job got done (see: Cincinnatus). But, as always, human corruption seeped in, including the greed and ruthlessness of the very wealthy, and in 46 BCE, a dictator was sworn in named Julius Caesar, who manipulated his allies to name him Dictator for life. The (ahem) conservatives in the Senate, led by Brutus and Cassius (see the play by Shakespeare) stabbed Julius Ceasar to death in the Senate (temporarily Theater of Pompey, because a mob of stupid, crazy magaheads burned the existing Curia of the Senate to the ground a few years earlier in a rage over a murder gone wrong between two mobs of gladiators on a nearby post road). By then the damage was done. Another in a series of civil wars ensued, and peace was restored (sort of) by the tyrant Octavian (Augustus Caesar, the nephew and adoptive son of Julius Caesar). The year 31 marks the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium and signals the start of more than half a millennium of 'empire.' So who were the conservatives in all that? The mob who burned down the Senate Curia? or the Senators who murdered Julius Caesar in an effort to end his dictator for life status and return to the annual (yes, every year!) elections for all the twosies (two guys on every job). That's from the top down, two consuls (like two U.S. Presidents), two praetors, two... you name it. Do you see the same echoes here that I do? LIke the burning of the Senate Curia (building) as compared with the attempt by maga-brains to destroy the U.S. Capitol building (named after the Capitolium in ancient Rome)? Ultimately, no radical can be called either conservative, or liberal, or socialist, or capitalist. In the middle (moderate center) is where we need to govern or be governed. That is why we have two senators from each state, I am sure. When I first learned the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' in high school, the context was about the U.S. Constitution, and those appointed to preserve. Conservatives were to be more about strict constructionism, whereas liberals could kinda, sorta stretch the words of 1787 a little bit (but never too much). The far right (far wrong) are so far to the right that they think the moderate center (reasonable people) are "far left." Let's get our words straight so that we can think straight. Sheep Heil! JTC
I recall Rupert Murdoch stating categorically that Donald Trump was absolutely unfit to be re elected POTUS again. I wonder where that voice is now, now that the American public could use hearing that?
also recall other conservative voices, such as Lindsey Graham saying they were all done with him and Mitch McConnell saying Trump was absolutely responsible for the attack on the Capital.
Voices strangely silent now.
Even more strange is the silence of Democrats who seem too gutless to seek to hold Republicans to their word. What a shame if the gutlessness of Democrats is what costs us our Democracy. Is this the best a two party system can offer us?
So that is another man I am learning is responsible for the crap the republicans are throwing in our faces now. This man obviously had some severe mental issues based on an abusive childhood. Hearst and Pulitzer started what back then was called yellow journalism by using sensationalized news and glaring features in a competition to sell more newspapers. Journalists discovered that the more brazen and horrific the story, the more papers they could sell. It continues today with Fox News, News Max, and others. "Normal" Americans call it alternative media which in essence are stories without evidence or facts. Many right-wing Americans view them as the gospel. I always put my faith in Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, John Chancellor, Harry Reasoner, and others like them. They simply reported the news the way it actually was. The fact that this man was a cruel, obnoxious bully isn't even what makes me the sickest. What makes me sick is that he touted being a conservative which tried to sell America on straight-laced ethics and morality while he sexually assaulted women in his glass tower!! Republicans honestly think that Americans can't see how debased their party has become!
Fox is worse now. I accidentally saw it on tv last night. Some woman was saying how disgusting that event was with Obama, Clinton and Biden had. Then she had Trump at the memorial for the slain policeman on Long Island. They invited him and he went. Fox had him on for a long time while he spouted how disgusting the USA had become and when he becomes president it won’t be like that anymore. It made me sick. The pro Palestinians outside Radio City also made me sick.
Amen Robert. Great read. Your first paragraph… “Fox News has released more poison into the groundwater of the American mind than any other contaminator. Indeed, Donald Trump would be less toxic if his effluence weren’t leached through Fox’s cesspool before bubbling up in millions of American homes,” hits home hard. I routinely bring up The Fox (not news, for it is not) as the single most destructive force in the civilized history of humankind. It’s minute by minute toxic spew by one gaslit, gaslighting liar after another into America’s airwaves has exponentially dumbed down the IQ-challenged and spread an oily, black, sulfuric residue across our land. This residue of dis and misinformation, conspiracy as fact and hateful intolerance has rotted the collective mind of Americans. From overseas, we are seen with ever-deepening concern for our growing collective ignorance, heartlessness, intolerance, inequity and dumbed down embrace of authoritarianism.
Absent my Bluenami dream —giant crashing November blue wave— from “the secret Biden voter,” (the many who won’t engage with hate and stupidity, don’t don bumper stickers or yard signs and step away from loud Trumplers), without that Bluenami, lady liberty she sinks beneath the inky black waters lapping at her shores. For 10+ years, the ever-darkening and stronger waves overcoming her and our precious, imperfect experiment in democracy.
Am sorriest to our next gens for evil brew of humanity we pass to them - planet on fire, vivid intolerance and ignorance, goodness losing to evil, lies are truth, unconscionable debt levels thanks to borrow & spend GOP liars (contrast with Dems: tax the rich & spend), human rights in retreat, stunning wealth inequality, and a sociopathic billionaire donor class laser focused on their corrupt pursuit of power and money.
And then there’s Trumpler winking at fellow dictators, salivating for return to Oval; why are we still tolerating this oily-orange, pathologically lying sociopath?
Three traitors to American values, Trump, Ailes and Murdoch. Trump will hopefully go to jail with his wealth significantly reduced. Ailes is disgraced and dead. Although he has poisoned the press and the public in Australia, the UK and America Murdoch remains rich and safe. Let’s start thinking about how and where to give Murdoch his due. But first let’s take care of Trump.
A very gut wrenching piece to read, Robert. Having grown up in the area just south of Warren, Ohio, I understand what happened to him. Ailes was a product of cruelty and became cruel, and was further fueled by the unfettered greed of Murdoch and our truly runaway capitalism. I had forgotten he was from Ohio. Frankly, I had forgotten him. When I think about how a child, and probably one with a great future potential for good, came to become this bully, it makes me urge all the more that truly good hearted people run for office. You are needed for every office in our great land. Not just in foreign policy, but in the county offices where children are served, and empathy is so needed. These are where the safety nets exist, but somehow failed Roger Ailes, as did his parents.
And look at our President. He grew up in modest circumstances, but with love and no beatings. I’m incredibly grateful for Joe Biden, a decent, of course imperfect human.
I've lost 3 close friends who I knew since childhood thanks to Fox news. The all 3 got involved in the hate and vitriol that is Fox news and became people I no longer knew. I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to watch the documentary "The Brainwashing of My Dad". It opened my eyes to what exactly happened to these now ex-friends.
Whatever Ailes was, Rush Limbaugh, was, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump are - remember who helped enable them, empower them, and give them credibility. I certainly see Rupert Murdoch on the scene. I call him "the antichrist of journalism" and that's exactly what he was and is.
Much as it gives me heartburn at 4:30 in the morning, thank you dear Robert for that illuminating History lesson on the POS that was Roger Ailes and the History of Fox News and their cohorts of Rush, Glenn B. etc.
I despise them all with a passion I cant put into words for the damage they've done to the peoples and Democracies here and around the world. They've supported and enabled a tyrant and have helped bring America to her knees. The non-stop lies, the gaslighting, the mismanaged covid crisis, the "state-TV" during the Trump administration, the support of the "Big Lie", I could go on and on. And on. It is beyond shameful. It should be criminal. Yet Fox is still played on Military bases around the world. Excuse my language but W.T.F.?!!!
There is a special place is hell reserved for Rupert Murdoch. Roger Ailes is waiting for him I'm sure. I'm sorry you had to deal with him at all Professor Reich. You are way too good for them anyway. They don't even pretend to be "Fair and Balanced" anymore. They just keep spewing their garbage day after day after day.
We've got a lot of work to do dear friends before November but we CAN do this!! President Biden is on the offensive and Trump is losing ground daily. He is running on a losing platform and he goes to trial in less than 3 weeks. So keep the faith everyone!!! We will 🏆 this Battle once and for all come November 5th!!! ❤️🇺🇸💙
I think comparisons with Goebbels are not terribly far off the mark. Poisoning a nation for profit is not much worse than ideological evil. But, as the Dude might say, that's just my opinion, man.
Ailes sexually harassed my friend in High School. We hung out at KYW- TV at the Tom Synder Show - and it was in Philadelphia. My friend came forward to Gretchen’s lawyer, and one newspaper wrote of her horrible experience in Ailes office at KYW-TV. For years I have been exposing him. I called producers when he was interviewed on TV. I met with tv Pioneer Jack Rhodes who was well aware of what Roger Ailes had been up to for years. Many knew. What stills makes me sick is that Ailes was paid when he left FOX. It was wrong as is the arbitration clause in the contract that prevented the case from going to trial.
Thank you, Robert. The Republicans, GOP, MAGA, Conservatives - however they manifest around the world - are saturated with the worst of human behaviour and appetites. Ailes and Murdoch are two examples of the utterly despicable corruption that can be expressed in "human" beings.
The sick monster Rupert Murdoch (especially amplified by Ailes) has done more to destroy civilisation than anyone since Hitler and Stalin. All for money and ego.
#MangoWanker #Mobster #Traitor #Rapist
#GOPtraitors #Trump #Putin
#Fascists
#Murdoch
#Reagan began the #CRIMINAL #GOP
"I remember large jowls hanging from fat cheeks, giving the overall impression of a giant bulldog" - priceless!!
Thank you for this piece of history !
Aides was nothing but a bully scumbag! A despicable disgusting deplorable and what he did to their viewers should have been criminal! Praying the next lawsuit will be the end of Faux News for ever! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 remember their FCC license is for ENTERTAINMENT, …not news! And should be revoked!
Amazing bit of history, Prof. Reich. Thank you. Let me pick one little bit of legume from your rich (reich?) plate. You say: "In the 1980s, Ailes’s politics grew more conservative, along with those of the Republican Party." I choose not to call the repugnicants 'conservative.' To me, conservative means people who want to keep things as they are. To me, the repugnicants and their magabrains and other camp followers are RADICALS, and dangerous at that. Nobody did more to harm the word 'liberal' than drug addict Rush Limbaugh (who admitted scouring the streets at night looking for another illegal Oxycontin fix when his drug dealers failed to come through). Rush Limbaugh turned 'liberal' into a hate word for simple magabrains, just as (actually the vast majority of US citizens) are trained to become violent when you even mention the word socialism. Civilized, humane health care is 'evil socialism.' Wrong, it is a basic human right. Our national corporate for profit wealth-care mafia is a crime against humanity. It's like slavery in the old South: most people seem to buy into it. We are the only industrialized nation where the wealth scare mafia robs millions of their pensions and savings, and bankrupts millions, while actually causing many thousands of bad medical outcomes including death (murder). The point of my comment ultimately is that words are what we make of them. Going back, as I often do, to the morays (morae) of the ancient Romans in their long-successful republic and (with some twists and turns) democracy... what counts is CENTRISM and MODERATION. A great example is that after the Romans expelled their last king (Tarquin the Arrogant) in 509 BCE, they set up a complex system that included magistrates and lesser civil servants. Every office but one had two men assigned, who had the power to veto each other. That meant theoretically that no man (it was all men, sorry ladies) could be utterly corrupt and run away with the show. Oops, except for one provision: the office of dictator. The city of Cincinnati, Ohio is named for the legendary Cincinnatus, a simple farmer who was ploughing his field, when a delegation from the Senate arrived and informed him that he had been chosen Dictator in a national emergency to defeat some of Rome's many deadly early enemies. Accordingly, Cincinnatus went to the city (Rome), put on his plumed helmet, and led an army out to defeat the enemy. He then immediately put his plumed hat aside, went back to his field, and resumed plowing as a simple and humble farmer. That is one example of many of the parables told by the early Romans to explain their morae (the ways of the ancestors) that drove their sense of morality. One can argue all day, but our Founding and Framing Fathers in the 1700s CE adored this stuff and made many of our institutions an echo of the world's longest-lasting democracy. Oh yes, and then doom struck. The office of dictator was supposed to be tightly controlled by the Senate, and not last more than six months at most, or as long as the job got done (see: Cincinnatus). But, as always, human corruption seeped in, including the greed and ruthlessness of the very wealthy, and in 46 BCE, a dictator was sworn in named Julius Caesar, who manipulated his allies to name him Dictator for life. The (ahem) conservatives in the Senate, led by Brutus and Cassius (see the play by Shakespeare) stabbed Julius Ceasar to death in the Senate (temporarily Theater of Pompey, because a mob of stupid, crazy magaheads burned the existing Curia of the Senate to the ground a few years earlier in a rage over a murder gone wrong between two mobs of gladiators on a nearby post road). By then the damage was done. Another in a series of civil wars ensued, and peace was restored (sort of) by the tyrant Octavian (Augustus Caesar, the nephew and adoptive son of Julius Caesar). The year 31 marks the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium and signals the start of more than half a millennium of 'empire.' So who were the conservatives in all that? The mob who burned down the Senate Curia? or the Senators who murdered Julius Caesar in an effort to end his dictator for life status and return to the annual (yes, every year!) elections for all the twosies (two guys on every job). That's from the top down, two consuls (like two U.S. Presidents), two praetors, two... you name it. Do you see the same echoes here that I do? LIke the burning of the Senate Curia (building) as compared with the attempt by maga-brains to destroy the U.S. Capitol building (named after the Capitolium in ancient Rome)? Ultimately, no radical can be called either conservative, or liberal, or socialist, or capitalist. In the middle (moderate center) is where we need to govern or be governed. That is why we have two senators from each state, I am sure. When I first learned the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' in high school, the context was about the U.S. Constitution, and those appointed to preserve. Conservatives were to be more about strict constructionism, whereas liberals could kinda, sorta stretch the words of 1787 a little bit (but never too much). The far right (far wrong) are so far to the right that they think the moderate center (reasonable people) are "far left." Let's get our words straight so that we can think straight. Sheep Heil! JTC
I recall Rupert Murdoch stating categorically that Donald Trump was absolutely unfit to be re elected POTUS again. I wonder where that voice is now, now that the American public could use hearing that?
also recall other conservative voices, such as Lindsey Graham saying they were all done with him and Mitch McConnell saying Trump was absolutely responsible for the attack on the Capital.
Voices strangely silent now.
Even more strange is the silence of Democrats who seem too gutless to seek to hold Republicans to their word. What a shame if the gutlessness of Democrats is what costs us our Democracy. Is this the best a two party system can offer us?
So that is another man I am learning is responsible for the crap the republicans are throwing in our faces now. This man obviously had some severe mental issues based on an abusive childhood. Hearst and Pulitzer started what back then was called yellow journalism by using sensationalized news and glaring features in a competition to sell more newspapers. Journalists discovered that the more brazen and horrific the story, the more papers they could sell. It continues today with Fox News, News Max, and others. "Normal" Americans call it alternative media which in essence are stories without evidence or facts. Many right-wing Americans view them as the gospel. I always put my faith in Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, John Chancellor, Harry Reasoner, and others like them. They simply reported the news the way it actually was. The fact that this man was a cruel, obnoxious bully isn't even what makes me the sickest. What makes me sick is that he touted being a conservative which tried to sell America on straight-laced ethics and morality while he sexually assaulted women in his glass tower!! Republicans honestly think that Americans can't see how debased their party has become!
Fox is worse now. I accidentally saw it on tv last night. Some woman was saying how disgusting that event was with Obama, Clinton and Biden had. Then she had Trump at the memorial for the slain policeman on Long Island. They invited him and he went. Fox had him on for a long time while he spouted how disgusting the USA had become and when he becomes president it won’t be like that anymore. It made me sick. The pro Palestinians outside Radio City also made me sick.
Amen Robert. Great read. Your first paragraph… “Fox News has released more poison into the groundwater of the American mind than any other contaminator. Indeed, Donald Trump would be less toxic if his effluence weren’t leached through Fox’s cesspool before bubbling up in millions of American homes,” hits home hard. I routinely bring up The Fox (not news, for it is not) as the single most destructive force in the civilized history of humankind. It’s minute by minute toxic spew by one gaslit, gaslighting liar after another into America’s airwaves has exponentially dumbed down the IQ-challenged and spread an oily, black, sulfuric residue across our land. This residue of dis and misinformation, conspiracy as fact and hateful intolerance has rotted the collective mind of Americans. From overseas, we are seen with ever-deepening concern for our growing collective ignorance, heartlessness, intolerance, inequity and dumbed down embrace of authoritarianism.
Absent my Bluenami dream —giant crashing November blue wave— from “the secret Biden voter,” (the many who won’t engage with hate and stupidity, don’t don bumper stickers or yard signs and step away from loud Trumplers), without that Bluenami, lady liberty she sinks beneath the inky black waters lapping at her shores. For 10+ years, the ever-darkening and stronger waves overcoming her and our precious, imperfect experiment in democracy.
Am sorriest to our next gens for evil brew of humanity we pass to them - planet on fire, vivid intolerance and ignorance, goodness losing to evil, lies are truth, unconscionable debt levels thanks to borrow & spend GOP liars (contrast with Dems: tax the rich & spend), human rights in retreat, stunning wealth inequality, and a sociopathic billionaire donor class laser focused on their corrupt pursuit of power and money.
And then there’s Trumpler winking at fellow dictators, salivating for return to Oval; why are we still tolerating this oily-orange, pathologically lying sociopath?
And here we are…
Three traitors to American values, Trump, Ailes and Murdoch. Trump will hopefully go to jail with his wealth significantly reduced. Ailes is disgraced and dead. Although he has poisoned the press and the public in Australia, the UK and America Murdoch remains rich and safe. Let’s start thinking about how and where to give Murdoch his due. But first let’s take care of Trump.
A very gut wrenching piece to read, Robert. Having grown up in the area just south of Warren, Ohio, I understand what happened to him. Ailes was a product of cruelty and became cruel, and was further fueled by the unfettered greed of Murdoch and our truly runaway capitalism. I had forgotten he was from Ohio. Frankly, I had forgotten him. When I think about how a child, and probably one with a great future potential for good, came to become this bully, it makes me urge all the more that truly good hearted people run for office. You are needed for every office in our great land. Not just in foreign policy, but in the county offices where children are served, and empathy is so needed. These are where the safety nets exist, but somehow failed Roger Ailes, as did his parents.
And look at our President. He grew up in modest circumstances, but with love and no beatings. I’m incredibly grateful for Joe Biden, a decent, of course imperfect human.
I've lost 3 close friends who I knew since childhood thanks to Fox news. The all 3 got involved in the hate and vitriol that is Fox news and became people I no longer knew. I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to watch the documentary "The Brainwashing of My Dad". It opened my eyes to what exactly happened to these now ex-friends.