FOX News chief Roger Ailes has dropped all pretense of "fair and balanced" and instead feels the need to admit what the network was put on Earth to do: push GOP talking points.
Ailes has a blunt rejoinder to those who say he runs a biased outfit: “Every other network has given all their shows to liberals. We are the balance.” Even MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman, “tacks to the center,” Ailes complains, and “doesn’t act like a conservative.”
I'm sure that's a surprise to George Will, David Gregory, Candy Crowley and all the other "both sides do it" fetishists. I wonder what their response to Ailes will be since everyone not on FOX is apparently a Dirty Effin' Hippie liberal right now.
Most likely they'll come to the conclusion that they need to double down on their Obama bashing, if only to show professional courtesy to Ailes' crew and take some of the workload off them, no doubt. After all, "liberal" is just about the worst insult you can direct at any member of the Washington press corps, and Ailes has made his fortunes off making it that way.
Time to go long on fainting couch manufacturers and jewelry stores with plenty of pearls to be clutched. Hell, the piece in question up there was written my Howard Kurtz, and includes this:
Ailes raises a Fox initiative that he cooked up: “Are our producers on board on this ‘Regulation Nation’ stuff? Are they ginned up and ready to go?” Ailes, who claims to be “hands off” in developing the series, later boasts that “no other network will cover that subject … I think regulations are totally out of control,” he adds, with bureaucrats hiring Ph.D.s to “sit in the basement and draw up regulations to try to ruin your life.” It is a message his troops cannot miss.
But he's fair and balanced, Kurtz will tell you.
Privately, Fox executives say the entire network took a hard right turn after Obama’s election, but, as the Tea Party’s popularity fades, is edging back toward the mainstream.
If that's true, then it's the mainstream that's moving, not FOX News. Isn't that great?
