Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Democrats have delivered the Square Deal, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and now… the Big Joe Biden Deal.

I was promised a recession.

No one could have predicted…

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

Come on, man.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Roger Ailes, Dogging the Wags

Roger Ailes, Dogging the Wags

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Actual journalist John Cook at Gawker has a jaw-dropping report on “Roger Ailes’ Secret Nixon-Era Blueprint for Fox News“:

Republican media strategist Roger Ailes launched Fox News Channel in 1996, ostensibly as a “fair and balanced” counterpoint to what he regarded as the liberal establishment media. But according to a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the intellectual forerunner for Fox News was a nakedly partisan 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the “prejudices of network news” and deliver “pro-administration” stories to heartland television viewers.
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The memo—called, simply enough, “A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News”— is included in a 318-page cache of documents detailing Ailes’ work for both the Nixon and George H.W. Bush administrations that we obtained from the Nixon and Bush presidential libraries. Through his firms REA Productions and Ailes Communications, Inc., Ailes served as paid consultant to both presidents in the 1970s and 1990s, offering detailed and shrewd advice ranging from what ties to wear to how to keep the pressure up on Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the first Gulf War.
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The documents—drawn mostly from the papers of Nixon chief of staff and felon H.R. Haldeman and Bush chief of staff John Sununu—reveal Ailes to be a tireless television producer and joyful propagandist. He was a forceful advocate for the power of television to shape the political narrative, and he reveled in the minutiae constructing political spectacles—stage-managing, for instance, the lighting of the White House Christmas tree with painstaking care. He frequently floated ideas for creating staged events and strategies for manipulating the mainstream media into favorable coverage, and used his contacts at the networks to sniff out the emergence of threatening narratives and offer advice on how to snuff them out—warning Bush, for example, to lay off the golf as war in the Middle East approached because journalists were starting to talk. There are also occasional references to dirty political tricks, as well as some positions that seem at odds with the Tea Party politics of present-day Fox News: Ailes supported government regulation of political campaign ads on television, including strict limits on spending. He also advised Nixon to address high school students, a move that caused his network to shriek about “indoctrination” when Obama did it more than 30 years later….

Seriously: Even if Denton’s iPad-friendly formatting makes your teeth hurt, it’s worth clicking over and reading the whole piece. No matter how cynical we bloggers think we are, it’s… instructive... to find out just how much the current GOP regards voters as nothing more than an audience, and “governing” as something that bears the same resemblance to government as a Pringles chip does to a potato.

Reader Interactions

29Comments

  1. 1.

    TenguPhule

    And yet FOX still is on the air instead of in their liberal detention camps where they belong.

    This is not a rational and sane world.

  3. 3.

    Mnemosyne

    My congressman just e-mailed to let me (and his other constituents) know he’s on The Twitter. I hope he’s smarter than Anthony Weiner.

  4. 4.

    Yutsano

    My congressman just e-mailed to let me (and his other constituents) know he’s on The Twitter.

    Did you silently giggle or loudly guffaw?

  6. 6.

    Yutsano

    how does a guy that fat stay alive?

    You reverse mortgage your soul. Just ask Chris Christie.

  7. 7.

    opie jeanne

    This is just too depressing. I think I’ve had enough for tonight; I need sleep so I can be fresh for tomorrow’s round of Republican nonsense.

  8. 8.

    Nellcote

    It always goes back to Nixon doesn’t it? Not putting him on trial was the Original Sin of our era.

  11. 11.

    Observer

    Sorry, I didn’t see anything untoward here in GOP media management….did you think the POTUS manages the media without an eye towards image?

    As for governing…those insidious 70s GOPers. They assumed that a) their party would be in power and b) they’d solve poverty and water pollution in 10 years. This wasn’t public postering; they *really* believed that in private. Sure it didn’t happen but there’s no smoking gun here. It’s a strange world when you slam a public figure for 40 years ago privately believing in something positive.

    The tally is now at three issues that the 70s/80s era GOP saw a problem they didn’t like and went about fixing it (from their perspective) and then worked at it for 40 years with the entire support of the party and all subsequent leaders and wannabe leaders:
    1) Roe v Wade and stacking the Supreme Court.
    2) Tax cuts – “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”
    3) Liberal media and the rise of Fox News

    Each one has Dick Cheney lurking behind the scenes.

    Are there any successful Democratic ideas or visions over the past 40 years? Nope. You folks have been too busy making fun of people and calling them stupid.

    Let’s see: problems, solutions, vision and loyalty. Stark contrast to triangulating or calling your own “f*cking retarded”.

    Maybe those guys aren’t so dumb after all?

  12. 12.

    Yutsano

    Good Lord, a second firebagger outing? Is this a Canada Day present or something?

  14. 14.

    MikeJ

    Rahm didn’t call our own fucking retarded. He said it of people who were working against Democrats. De facto republicans.

  15. 15.

    Yutsano

    would you rather be an out gay guy now or in 1975?

    Now. No question. Stonewall was barely six years old in 1975 and there weren’t nearly as many eyes opened. Plus at least my state has very strong protections for gay folks that didn’t exist in 1975. It would have been nice to be on the edge of the fight, but I’m happy with where things are settling for the future. In 20 years being gay will be as boring as the suburbs.

    De facto republicans.

    Exhibit A of such up above. And the firebaggers tore Obama up for saying something nice about Reagan. Sheesh.

  18. 18.

    Yutsano

    Now, do you think that it’s gotten easier because of Republicans or Democrats?

    Kind of a mixed bag actually. Reagan stomped on us, Carter pretty much did nothing, Bush the Elder was actually more benign than Clinton in some regards, and Dubya was, well, Dubya. So far honestly the only president who’s taken any kind of active approach on gay rights is Obama. But I also think that’s directly related to growing GLBT political clout.

    But at the grassroots level, wouldn’t you say that it’s the Democrats?

    Oh no question there. Most of the state and local gains would have gone nowhere without the Democrats helping along.

  21. 21.

    Yutsano

    I’ll bet we can find a few.

    I’d bet money single payer in both Vermont and California started this way. Not to mention the most glaring example of all: the Civil Rights Movement. LBJ didn’t wake up and decide to liberate the nigras all on his lonesome.

    Dammit, you did that reply-in-edit thing! You and that wife of yours….

    Ancient Taiwanese secret. I’m sure she’d be happy to tell you how but she’s, umm, celebrating Canada Day in her own inimitable fashion.

  23. 23.

    Citizen Alan

    Rahm didn’t call our own fucking retarded. He said it of people who were working against Democrats. De facto republicans.

    He said it about activists at MoveOn.org who were preparing to run ads in the districts of Blue Dogs who actively voted against ACA. The text of the proposed ad is here. The initial ad buy (which never took place) was to have targeted Melancon (LA), Barrow (GA) and Matheson (UT), each of whom had actually voted against even letting the ACA out of committee. This was at a point when the Blue Dog Coalition was openly bragging about having killed the public option.

    Reasonable people can disagree about whether the ads would have been a good thing or not. I just thought people would like to know what the content of the actual ads was, since it’s fashionable here to demonize MoveOn as “de facto Republicans” and claim that they were stabbing good Democrats in the back for failing some kind of purity test. Apparently, MoveOn did not realize that not only is it a crime against humanity to vote third party or even seek to primary a Blue Dog, it is now unacceptably vulgar to even publicly criticize them or encourage voters to contact their offices and urge them to vote for the President’s signature issue. I only hope that the nation’s mentally handicapped children have recovered from the stigma of being compared to such ingrates.

  24. 24.

    PaulW

    If any of you ever read The Selling of the President – a book that’s been out for 40 years – you’d all see where the FOX manipulation mindset started. Ailes is a major figure in that book: and the way the media is set up, staged, let about by its nose and micromanaged is all there.

  25. 25.

    JPL

    Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you.

    This is from the Gawker article. I have to say they knew their audience.

  28. 28.

    Epicurus

    Unfortunately, the tactic seems to have succeeded with a large number of media consumers in this country. More importantly, the other networks have tried (vainly) to follow suit. Somewhere, Paddy Chayevsky is laughing at us all.

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