Mike Allen at Politico is reporting that:
“Friends and associates are encouraging Fox News chief Roger Ailes to jump into the political arena for real by running for president in 2012”
I am at a near loss for words. The only thing I can think of to say (when I stop laughing) is, “How can I help?”
The prospect of an Ailes candidacy would be a dream come true. Just imagining that corpulent hulk on the campaign trail sends shivers of joy through me. This is the man who gave us Richard Nixon. This is the man who produced the Rush Limbaugh show that failed miserably in TV syndication. Ailes is a creature of the media. His entire professional life has been dedicated to propaganda. He may be able to hammer together an effective media campaign from time to time, but he has never had much of a public presence and his appeal on that basis is on a par with Dick Cheney.
The ramifications of Candidate Ailes are numerous and exhilarating. Who would he choose for a running mate? Sarah Palin? Michele Bachmann? Glenn Beck? And what would his cabinet look like? A bunch of aging white men surrounded by anchor babes in short skirts? As Secretary of State, Bill O’Reilly could shout down world leaders and issue directives detailing which foreign diplomats were pinheads. Press Secretary Hannity would make certain that nothing but the right lies and innuendo emanate from the White House.
It’s interesting that this ludicrous notion is being floated just as the press is wallowing in a fabricated war between the White House and Fox News. It seems to me that having the head of Fox drafted as an opponent to the President seals the case that Fox itself is an opponent of the President and, therefore, not a credible news enterprise.
The article in Politico asserts that Ailes “has an aggessive [sic], winning personality….” That appears to be the opinion of the article’s author, Mike Allen, who cites Ailes pal Frank Luntz for confirmation. Allen also says that the talk about Ailes running is “based on more than mere speculation.” However, there is nothing but speculation in the column. There is no quote from Ailes, or anyone close to him, that affirmatively addresses the question of his running or even thinking about it.
This idea is so patently absurd that you have to wonder who’s behind it. What motives would the rest of the “friends and associates” Allen references have? And why would they want to remain anonymous? It’s not as if this is an insult to Ailes. Allen doesn’t bother to reveal his sources, but I have it on good authority that Allen was seen having lunch with Richard Heene, of Balloon Boy fame.
Is Ailes running for president? Is Politico being punked? Is that a balloon over the White House with an old fat guy hanging out of it? I think Glenn Beck is hard at work connecting dots that prove that Obama and ACORN are behind an effort to sink Ailes’ campaign before it has even begun. And the madness goes on…..
[Update] Allen is now reporting that Ailes laughed off the entreaties that he run for president.
“Ailes replied when asked about the possibility, according to the aide: ‘This country needs fair and balanced news more now than ever before, so I’m going to decline a run for the presidency.'”
If Ailes believes that the country needs fair and balanced news more now than ever before, does that mean he’s going to shut down Fox News?
This steaming stew of a story smacks of a Frank Luntz stunt designed to distract from the negative attention FOX has been receiving vis a vis being called out on its anything-but-fair-and-balanced news coverage by the White House. Ailes won’t run, he knows his odds would be worse than Palin’s (she at least has name recognition), very likely he wouldn’t run if he thought he could actually win (he enjoys his current job too much, where, unlike the case of presidency, he gets to dictate and the employees are only too eager to comply), but isn’t it a hoot to watch the legitimate news outlets cover this replacement story and isn’t it fun for Luntz to comment on the story he invented out of nothing? Anyway, your post is hilarious. The speculation on vp position and other slots particularly so.
If this was a stunt to bait the media into covering it, it was a dismal failure. Every story I saw about this ridiculed it as nonsense or insane. I’m not sure that’s the reaction anyone would have wanted.
I wrote this post after catching a glimpse of Countdown, recording in silence to be watched later, with sub-host O’Donnell, as is the case on most Fridays, so I didn’t hear the commentary but just knew the story was being covered. Of course Countdown will mock it as would any other honest, non-conservative, and even some honest conservative broker, as it so obviously, patently deserves to be. My point is there is what I would call an “absolute value” of distraction (I invented this term to apply to “attention,” as in “absolute value of attention”) in that negative distraction, as with attention, is still coverage, regardless of the tone, thus serves the purpose, which is ANY attention or ANY distraction. So maybe- and of course I could be way off -a FOX-generated story would divert attention from the so-called war with the WH long enough to enter the weekend, hopefully after which the media would be chasing another irrelevant non-story entirely. Of course, the glaring error in my hypothesis is that FOX, being FOX, probably believes it’s been winning this war, in which case why would they wish to change the story? It’s not as if they would feel desperate enough to switch storylines tailor-made to receive, as you say, ridicule.