Hard Right, Soft Porn

A popular aphorism avers that only the good die young, so Roger Ailes death today at the age of 77 is ethically appropriate. Ailes was the midwife who birthed that particular Fox News brand of hard right politics and soft core pornography, a heady mix which was modeled on the Rupert Murdoch brand of sexual titillation and hypocritical moral outrage. Billy Bragg had the best commentary on this particular brand of yellow journalism:





Here in the States, the apotheosis of this paradoxical blend of umbrage and voyeurism was perhaps the 'expose' of Spring Break shenanigans complete with footage of young, scantily clad women. Never has moral indignation been accompanied by such hateboners... gotta sell that Cialis to the angry geezers.

Besides lowering the tone of political discourse to a troglodytic level, there is something more sinister going on- the Fox Effect... Fox viewers are, as a whole, less informed on current events than Daily Show viewers. News, trumped by comedy... thanks Roger!

Then there's the frathole atmosphere that Ailes fostered at the network, a vile miasma of sexual harassment and racial discrimination which comes as no surprise to those who have observed the constant belittling of women and minorities that was the network's stock-in-trade.

It came as a bit of a surprise that Ailes died so soon after his ouster from Fox, but his ghost will haunt the American brainspace for years to come, a ghost largely manifesting as a paranoia and hatred that seeped outward from Ailes' mind and poisoned vast swathes of America's population. If there is a single individual who could claim the title of worst American of the 20th century ever, Ailes would certainly be in the running for the title.