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You are here: Home / They wrote a book about it, they said it was like ancient Rome

They wrote a book about it, they said it was like ancient Rome

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Pretty apt summary of the latest Ailes revelations:

Possible poisoning, check.

Kelly had even begun to speculate, according to one Fox source, that Trump might have been responsible for her getting violently ill before the debate last summer. Could he have paid someone to slip something into her coffee that morning in Cleveland.

Members of the royal court acting as pimps, check.

Ailes’s longtime executive assistant Judy Laterza — who became one of his top lieutenants, earning more than $2 million a year, according to a Fox executive — seemed to function as a recruiter of sorts. According to Carlson’s attorney, in 2002, Laterza remarked to a college intern she saw on the elevator about how pretty she was and invited her to meet Ailes. After that meeting, Ailes arranged for the young woman to transfer to his staff. Her first assignment was to go down to the newsstand and fetch him the latest issue of Maxim. When she returned with the magazine, Ailes asked her to stay with him in his office. He flipped through the pages. The woman told the Washington Post that Ailes said, “You look like the women in here. You have great legs. If you sleep with me, you could be a model or a newscaster.”

Roger Ailes has been the most powerful man in American politics over the past 20 years. It’s possible — though unlikely — that he will get Trump elected as leader of the free world.

We’ve come a long way over the past 1500 years, haven’t we?

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  2. 2.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    My prediction is that all the Faux “News” women involved in lawsuits will settle out of court with ironclad non-disclosure agreements in place. Chances are these filings dribs and drabs will be the most we’ll ever see about what went on.

    This isn’t about “helping other women” or some fight against the broader cause of harassment in the workplace, it’s about getting a payout to let them live in the lifestyle they grew accustomed to when paraded in front of the camera.

    I hope I’m wrong and somebody like Carlson has had some type of come to jeeebus moment but I’m not betting on it. Andrea Makris doesn’t look like she’s ever worked since she settled with O’Reilly over a decade ago:
    http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/deb-peterson/andrea-mackris-can-t-seem-to-shake-the-falafel-thing/article_5974cf83-afc4-578f-8203-d00101274a01.html

  4. 4.

    Peale

    It would be easy to say that Roger Ailes just fell behind the times and like a lot of old guys, just didn’t know that this kind of behavior wasn’t acceptable anymore. Times changes. Left him behind. But more likely they’ll just blame the sluts for not shutting up.

  6. 6.

    Jeffro

    Wait…isn’t Ailes consulting and helping w/ debate prep for one of our two candidates for President of the United States? I wish I could remember which one. It’s probably Hillary.

  7. 7.

    Kay

    I feel like these revelations explain a lot about Fox News. Watch the morning show sometime. Those people are insane- now I know they’re all terrified. They’re fear-crazed.

  8. 8.

    Kay

    Kelly had even begun to speculate, according to one Fox source, that Trump might have been responsible for her getting violently ill before the debate last summer. Could he have paid someone to slip something into her coffee that morning in Cleveland.

    So if that’s true does she then have some ethical obligation to report it as just “news”? It’s certainly “news”, right? Need to know. Definitely. Or is there a zone of silence WITHIN the propaganda chamber?

  9. 9.

    NorthLeft12

    My wife and I had a discussion last night [again] about sexism and what women have to wade through to do their jobs, etc. One of my daughters gave up on her Masters thesis due to the toxic atmosphere in the Lab she worked in.

    I am just gobsmacked over the behavior of the men that do these things. I try to understand why they do what they do, but in the end I just end up at the same spot; they are horrible excuses for human beings that will only change [outwardly and superficially] after public outing and shaming.
    I was not able to convince my daughter that is what she needed to do in her situation.

  13. 13.

    hovercraft

    @Jeffro:
    Trump is assembling the scum of the earth team over there at Trump Towers.
    Officially on the payroll at one time:
    Manafort supporter of despots
    Lewadonkare manhadler of women
    Steve Bannon everything about him
    Steven Miller author of that Nazi revival speech we all witnessed on Wednesday
    David Bossie
    Unofficial:
    Jeffrey Lord
    Roger Stone
    Roger Ailles
    There are more I’m sure but they slip my mind at the moment.

  14. 14.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Peale:

    I read the whole New York story before coming to Balloon Juice this morning, and it indicates strongly that Ailes has been a predator and abuser from way back. That is supposedly one reason he didn’t get a position in the Nixon administration after helping him get elected.

  16. 16.

    jake the antisoshul soshulist

    You know your enemy by the company they keep.

    Knowing that there are people entirely willing to vote for Trump makes me despair for my country and my species.

  17. 17.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @NorthLeft12:
    Give people power, and many will abuse it to get what they want. People want sex, a lot. In any environment where men have strong systematic power over women, sex-related abuse will be frequent. There are a lot less situations where women have that systematic power, but in those situations they do it, too. Add a complete asshole like Aisles to this mix, and you get… this.

    TLDR, it’s Invisible Man Syndrome. Power brings out the beast in us.

  19. 19.

    hovercraft

    Rinse Priebus got testy with Fox this morning when the host asked him if he was disappointed that his prediction that Trump would be tied or ahead in the polls by Labor Day. He accused her of cherry picking polls when she cited the Fox poll.

  21. 21.

    JPL

    Well it explains why O’Reilly didn’t even receive a slap on the wrist, when his sexual harassment suit became public. Ailes should be remembered as the slime bag he is, rather than a media mogul. Unfortunately, since he has files on the other reporters, it will not be mentioned.
    Hillary’s emails also

  22. 22.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @NorthLeft12:

    I was not able to convince my daughter that is what she needed to do in her situation.

    She may have taken the better course for herself. Having spoken up myself in supposedly “protected” situations, the victim or whistleblower almost always gets smeared and drummed out of the organization. The personal cost is great.

  23. 23.

    gene108

    @Peale:

    It would be easy to say that Roger Ailes just fell behind the times and like a lot of old guys, just didn’t know that this kind of behavior wasn’t acceptable anymore. Times changes. Left him behind. But more likely they’ll just blame the sluts for not shutting up.

    I read the NY Mag article. Ailes was getting shitcanned for being an asshole back in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

    After helping Nixon win the White House, in 1968, as a media consultant, the Nixon crew did not want Ailes as part of the Administration, because Ailes was too big an asshole for them.

    It’s not just sexism that plagues Ailes. He’s verbally abusive in general and treats most folks, who are not in line with him, like shit.

    He usually lasts maybe 3-4 years tops on any job he’s landed prior to Fox News.

    Rupert Murdoch, being a spawn of Satan*, didn’t really care as long as the money was good and Rupert’s political influence grew.

    * Honestly, Rupert’s fucked up the news and politics in most of the native English speaking world.

  27. 27.

    geg6

    I read that article this morning. Put me completely off my morning coffee.

    I cannot imagine working in that environment. I mean, I’d never work for FOX anyway (not that they’d have me since I’m so old), but I’ve been harassed on the job before and it wasn’t nearly as horrific as that workplace has been portrayed. Not just the harassment, but the spying and phone tapping and all-around paranoia of the place.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    @Bex:

    She thought the Presidential candidate poisoned her! That’s at least as newsworthy as making shit up about Hillary Clinton’s health. They discussed that for 2 weeks. “Questions have been raised…”

  29. 29.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    The conservative, authoritarian mindset is truly a mental disorder, and toxic as hell. How otherwise intelligent people degrade themselves to either oppress or willingly suffer oppression is such a mystery to me, who finds most, if not all authority suspect and chafing. Conservatives are able to dismiss, and applaud, the most sordid behavior if it’s their guy’s sordid behavior. Why there are so many conservative women who enable this dysfunction is way above my pay grade to understand. Like chickens rooting for Col. Sanders.

  30. 30.

    That Guy

    Comparing these people to the court of Gaius “Bootsie” Julius Caesar Germanicus like that in tantamount to slander … of Gaius.

  31. 31.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    Roger Ailes is such an ewwwww disgusting scumball of scumballs. Hes like a freaking comic book version of a horrible person that you can’t believe exists in real life. All these women protecting him should be ashamed and Susan Estrich should go to hell.

  32. 32.

    hoodie

    @Fair Economist: Not too toxic for Nixon, just a potential liability if it becomes public knowledge. GOPers keep guys like Ailes and Stone on the down low for wet work because, basically, there is no low to which they will not stoop. Fox was perfect for Ailes because he could serve the GOP while pursuing his hobbies, and it worked for Murdoch because GOP politics gave him a ready supply of moron and nut job eyeballs. I wonder if Ailes was outed because Rupert (or his kids) wanted to dump Trump, who was tied to a dying demographic and, thus, declining audiences. They had to know what Ailes was doing. It’s impossible to keep stuff like this from becoming an open secret in an organization.

  33. 33.

    Feathers

    What isn’t being mentioned as much as the eewww!!! is that Ailes seems to have been doing the same sort of spying on journalists via phone records that had been going on in Britain at the Murdoch newspapers. There are already reporters demanding that the Justice Department investigate. Getting these sorts of records under false pretenses was made illegal during the Bush iI administration, so if Ailes and Fox were doing this in 2010, they could be in huge trouble. And does anyone think that with the level of dirty ops revealed by one reporter, that computer hacking and listening in on phone calls and messages weren’t also going on?

  34. 34.

    Ruckus

    @hovercraft:
    It’s almost like Trump is trying to be the biggest horse’s ass that he can.
    Which is of course the biggest horse’s ass in the world. Actually that’s not nice to horses, he’s the biggest festering pustule of an ass in the land. So he’s finally found something that he’s good at and suits him perfectly.

  35. 35.

    Keith G

    If only Roger Ailes’ significant other had been tweeting crotch pics, then we really would have a story

  37. 37.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Kay: But then she did a really suck-up interview with Trump. I remember her feeling his hair and giving him a coy head tilt when he said he only insulted Rosie O’Donnell.

  38. 38.

    Roger Moore

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    How otherwise intelligent people degrade themselves to either oppress or willingly suffer oppression is such a mystery to me, who finds most, if not all authority suspect and chafing.

    The suffering oppression is not something people do willingly but something they deal with because they don’t see a lot of good options. Employers have tremendous power over their employees, and this isn’t something that goes away as the job gets better. If anything, the higher up the salary ladder you climb, the more power your employer has. There are ever fewer job openings you can try to move to without a big loss of money and prestige, and an abusive employer may be able to close those off to you by slagging your reputation. “Sleep with me or you’ll never work in this business again” is not an idle threat.

  40. 40.

    NorthLeft12

    @Frankensteinbeck: In my daughter’s case the harassment was not really sexual in nature [as far as she would tell] but was more just plain old mental bullying and abuse. The guy [I never met him] used his limited authority to downgrade everyone around him. My daughter, being quiet and sensitive, supplied an easy target. She indicated to me that the other guys in the Lab were not helpful and afraid of the guy. Mainly for what he could do to their work and careers. The Prof in charge was an absentee supervisor who my daughter said would not be helpful. Since she was unwilling to approach him about this, I guess we will never know.

  41. 41.

    hitchhiker

    Way back in 1970 the girls in my class at the local public high school were required to wear skirts to class, because reasons. The women at Fox are now apparently required to

    a. Have “great” legs
    b. Show them off whenever the cameras are on
    c. Know that the Big Boss is checking out their legs

    One winter day when the temperature was in the -5 windchill category, some of us went on strike with the skirts thing and showed up in our jeans. I think the women at Fox should start showing up for work in business clothes instead of cocktail dresses.

  44. 44.

    NorthLeft12

    @O. Felix Culpa: Yes, I agree. It was her decision, and after putting in my two cents, I respected her decision to deal with it as she saw fit. I work with female colleagues who laugh off more of this than I think I would tolerate, but I just don’t know what it is like, because I have not had to deal with crap like that since high school.
    I just really hate to think about this asshole getting away with his behavior.

  46. 46.

    Feebog

    It’s really just as bad as you can imagine, and possibly worse. I do sensitive EEO investigations for a federal agency on a contract basis. The investigations are confidential, and I can’t go into any kind of detail, suffice to say that there are a lot of sexist bosses out there. Some are still trapped into 1950s thinking in terms of their relationships with women, but plenty are simply sexual predators who know exactly what they are doing.

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