Sometime back, my wife and I stopped at a gas station and went inside to buy a couple of fountain drinks. My wife noticed and bought some Mexican cookies called 'galetas'. What was initially delight started to disturb her as the implications of Mexican cookies at a Texaco dawned on her. How many Mexican immigrants are there in the area that a gas station finds it profitable to stock Mexican products?
Esquire is a 'men's magazine', which of course means that no actual 'real' men read it. Are you a real man? Do you read the magazine? No? I rest my case. This of course really pisses off the left-wing, vaguely effete men who write articles for Esquire and similarly obscure publications. They are all so damn smart, and nobody but their Moms and girlfriends listen to what they have to say!
Like all good Progressives steeped in the Rules for Radicals, this amorphous dissatisfaction and anger needs are target, and who better than a fat, bald senior citizen who has been eating their lunch for thirty years and more?
Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America?An exclusive and unbiased investigation into the highly paid operative of a foreign-born tycoon, a man who reengineered political and media culture and fomented a revolt that threatens the very stability of our country
I read that paragraph and thought that the article might be satirical, but the general rule is that satire is supposed to make other people look foolish, not the satirist.
So who is this … Roger Ailes, if he's not who he says he is — if he's not an average American? Well, the short answer is this: He is not only a man who has spent his entire life thinking of ways to win; he is a man who has spent his entire life winning. Nothing wrong with that, of course: America loves a winner. But let's be honest here: We're all average Americans. Does any of us win all the time? Of course not, or else we wouldn't be average. But Roger Ailes does. And so, Mr. Ailes, Esquire has a question, on behalf of other average Americans: What kind of man wins all the time? What kind of man gives his country, in roughly this order, Mike Douglas, Richard Nixon, Tom Snyder, Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America," the Willie Horton ad, the ad in which Michael Dukakis rides around in a tank and looks like a chipmunk, the presidency of George H. W. Bush, CNBC, Fox News (upstart-insurgent edition), Fox News (airwaves-of-the-empire edition), Fox News ("Obama sux" edition), and Fox News (Tea Party edition)? More pointedly, what kind of man figures out at age twenty-seven how to use television to legitimize Richard Nixon and then at age seventy to legitimize Sarah Palin?
After I read this, I figured out that the article is kind of a Rohrsach test. Progressives will totally get that there is some sort of criticism implied here, while the rest of us will be thinking, "...what the hell is the problem?"
The strangest 'hit piece' I've ever read and if I were Roger Ailes, I'd be pretty happy with the product. I suspect Esquire is pretty happy too, judging from the linkage the article is getting.
Think about this for a minute--the liberal media is now doing stories about conservative icons to boost their circulation. Who could they, would they, write about on the left that would draw as much attention? Well, you would first have to find yourself a successful liberal-progressive celebrity with the kinds of achievements Ailes has had over his career. Anyone come to mind? No one? Me either.
Well there is Barack Obama, but the journalist who sold their souls for access have been finding the market a little soft for their books. Two years of epic fail will do that.
Esquire articles about Roger Ailes is Mexican cookies. Interest in somebody like Roger Ailes would be normal in say, Alabama, but finding Roger in Esquire or Sarah in the New Yorker is one of those things that shouldn't be there, but is and suddenly you realize the world has changed.
