Fuck yeah. Roger Ailes was a lucre-driven propagandist. He was a scruple-free toady who preyed upon the fear and ignorance of an older, less-educated viewing audience to drive a profitable narrative of jingoism, xenophobia and bigotry. He cared far less about the ideals and principles of conservatism than he did about pushing the things that make your grandmother scared. And, let's not lose sight of this, he was a predatory misogynist who used his power to shape a culture of sexual harassment and predation as well as directly extorting sexual favors out of underlings. Things that don't happen without Fox News: - Whitewater - Lewinsky Scandal - The Iraq War - The Birther Movement - The Tea Party Movement - "Death Panels" - Wall2Wall Benghazi hearings - The Trump Presidency And Fox News doesn't happen without Roger Ailes. Do we mourn Joseph Goebbels? Would we mourn him if Hitler had been unsuccessful, if the burning of the Reichstag never happened? Because Roger Ailes was a sociopathic reptile, an opportunistic predator whose wants and desires were for a feudal American dystopia. I hope it hurt.
I like to say the only person's death I celebrate is Scalia, but maybe I need to widen that to add Ailes and eventually Murdoch.
The Iraq War pretty much broke my decorum. I had friends who worked with Ron Silver, thought he was a great guy, respected him. All I could remember was that mutherfucker cheering on a pointless invasion. If you want respect, earn it while you're alive. Just because you can't answer for your crimes anymore doesn't mean you didn't commit them.
This man, in cahoots with Rupert Murdoch, have created the shitty news and political environment we have in America today. And this was their GOAL. It wasn't an unintended consequence of their good intentions. They started with this decades-long plan, and tirelessly executed on it, turning Americans against each other solely for profit and the power to manipulate and destroy our Constitution. Slobodan Milosevic did this to Yugoslavia, simply by pitting neighbors against each other. He died in The Hague while on trial for war crimes for his actions. Ailes and Murdoch are celebrated by the Republican Party. The party that has destroyed America.
to you as well as kleinbl00: What you say sounds absolutely otherworldly to me. How else could describe an idea of someone striving to tear down democracy and pray upon elderly at such scale? This is bizarre. Weird, strange and odd. I need to know more about this before I make up my mind. You two sound absolutely convinced, and that makes me worried.
http://www.bravenewfilms.org/outfoxed https://theconversation.com/the-one-roger-ailes-hire-that-changed-american-politics-forever-62883 http://www.newsweek.com/roger-ailes-television-revolution-and-his-decision-changed-american-politics-612176 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525 In America, liberals and conservatives have two fundamentally different viewpoints of empathy: liberals view "fairness" as compassion for everyone while conservatives view "fairness" as opportunity for everyone. A liberal is more likely to support social programs because they recognize that society is made up of everyone in it and when the least among us suffer, our society is unfair. A conservative is more likely to support minimal regulation and oversight because success is based on hard work and skill and if you aren't successful, it's because you didn't work hard and developed the wrong skills. It comes down to inequality: liberals view inequality as a problem for society to vanquish while conservatives view inequality as something individuals should be empowered to overcome. Unfortunately, American society has been engineered/evolved over the past hundred years to mask a lot of the latent inequalities and unfairness within the system, particularly from those who benefit the most. It's not at all uncommon for the incumbents in any society to view their position as hereditary and their status as an entitlement. It's just as common for anyone else attempting to gain their status to be viewed as upstarts and pretenders. And playing on those prejudices is nothing new. The Pulitzer Prize is named after the man who started the Spanish American War for, well, pageviews.
You know, I figured out why I'm so uncomfortable with you and goobster gleeing over Ailes' death. I have trouble comprehending that there are truly bad people in the world sometimes. Things, too. Not merely gray, but mostly dark, all the way to black. I think it clashes with my worldview in some ways. I think I couldn't have viewed Hitler as an abhorrent danger to humanity that he's presented as, had I lived through his war in Europe. He's still a person, you know. His actions were terrible and their results - astonishingly horrific, but he was still a human being. I feel like I have to have some compassion for him just for that.
I met my first "truly bad person" about ten years ago. He was the roommate of a friend of mine. In the brief time I knew him, he - - wrecked his car in a hit-and-run DUI - raped his girlfriend's little sister (and stood trial, and mistrialed) - stole his roommate/best friend's fiancee - erased his roommate/best friend's server just for laughs The roommate found out about this the night he threw a going-away party for his best bro. Dude timed his disclosures for maximum pain. Why? Because it amused him. I have great faith in the general humanity of humanity. I think all people are fundamentally good and that nearly everyone you meet would rather hurt you than help you. The entire study of behavioral economics bears this out, and the existence of civilization supports it. But there are people who are evil. There are psychopaths in the world, and some of them are not well-adjusted to pantomiming empathy. I do not think that Roger Ailes was a psychopath. I'll bet he loved his children and the people who surrounded him mattered. But I also think that Roger Ailes managed to circumscribe the definition of "person" in his head to exclude the majority of humanity. I think Roger Ailes managed to craft a personal universe in which a select few were people and the rest didn't matter. Hitler was a person. But he was an evil person. He believed that the most victorious race needed to exterminate all other races, and if the Germans weren't the most victorious, they deserved to be exterminated. I don't feel anyone deserves to be exterminated. I also feel that this maxim defines humanity and anybody who disagrees should be treated carefully.
If anyone on Hubski were to chime in to his defense, well, that'd be pretty much unforgivable. But I would like to caution against actively lumping all republicans together and blaming exactly half the country as "the problem". We've gotta elevate above that. Not around here, but in our outreach efforts. Of which, there are currently none, so we need not change our tune... yet.