{"id":190058,"date":"2010-01-11T20:48:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T01:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/11\/roger-ailes-as-a-bed-wetting-coward\/"},"modified":"2010-01-11T20:48:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-12T01:48:00","slug":"roger-ailes-as-a-bed-wetting-coward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/11\/roger-ailes-as-a-bed-wetting-coward\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Ailes as a Bed-Wetting Coward"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/span> has a profile of Fox News chief Roger Ailes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I glanced at it, and was not particularly impressed, but Jonathan Chait teases what I think is a nugget of truth about the media mogul<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Second, Ailes comes through in the article as paranoid (quite possibly in the clinical sense) regarding his own personal vulnerability to terrorism:<\/span><\/p>\n

National security had long been a preoccupation of Fox News, and it was clear in the interview that the 9\/11 attacks had a profound effect on Mr. Ailes. They convinced him that he and his network could be terrorist targets.<\/p>\n

On the day of the attacks, Mr. Ailes asked his chief engineer the minimum number of workers needed to keep the channel on the air. The answer: 42. \u201cI am one of them,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve got a bad leg, I\u2019m a little overweight, so I can\u2019t run fast, but I will fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had 3,000 dead people a couple miles from here. I knew that any communications company could be a target.\u201d<\/p>\n

His movements now are shadowed by a phalanx of corporate-provided security. He travels to and from work in a miniature convoy of two sport utility vehicles. A camera on his desk displays the comings and goings outside his office, where he usually keeps the blinds drawn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I appreciate Mr. Chait’s eye for detail, but I disagree with his diagnosis, with the obvious caveat that neither he nor I are mental health professionals.<\/p>\n

This is not paranoia. This is hysterical unreasoning terror, and, as strange as it souncs, it actually decreases<\/span> the level of contempt that I feel for him.<\/p>\n

I used to think that Fox News was the We’re all gonna die!!!!!!!<\/span> network (it’s on one of the screens when I ride the exercise bike) because Ailes was trying to score partisan political points, but I was wrong.<\/p>\n

He’s not being a hypocrite, he just is a sniveling coward.<\/p>\n

H\/t Paul Krugman<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has a profile of Fox News chief Roger Ailes. I glanced at it, and was not particularly impressed, but Jonathan Chait teases what I think is a nugget of truth about the media mogul: Second, Ailes comes through in the article as paranoid (quite possibly in the clinical sense) regarding his …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1051,1064,1104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hypocrisy","category-media","category-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}