A Follow Up on Citizen Ailes . . .

Ok. So I finally finished the long article in New York Magazine.

I really did not learn much of anything new, save that Ailes was harsher on Beck than I had guessed. He actually once called out Beck for being too religious on his show. Not so much a surprise, but I never heard that particular nugget before. Beyond that, it's now clearer to me that the phenomenon, the cancer, the threat to the Republic that is Fox News can be well curtailed, if not crippled, if we can just push Ailes out.

He's been running the joint like some Medieval Duke, given such license from the king to run a certain far flung territory, that even the king is wary of messing with the Duke's prerogatives. Oh. That reminds me. The one other 'Hmm' nugget is that at one point before the '08 election, Unka Rupert had considered running an endorsement of Obama in the NY Post. Ailes pulled a blackmail move on Unka Rupert, and said if he ran the endorsement, Ailes would quit. And that stopped the endorsement. That's serves as the basis for my out of control duke analogy.

But getting back to Operation, "Cut the Cancer Out," Ailes has run that shop so tightly that with him out of way, who knows what will become of the operation? Currently he has no heir apparent. And Unka Rupert is old. His presumed legal heirs are not likely to give a rat's ass about playing nice. The machinations and plots of that family are already as thick as the plot of a old style Prime Time soap opera, if not a real opera. When Unka Rupert goes, expect a Battle Royale, no matter what the will says. And NewsCorp, generally, and Fox News, specifically, will be up for consumption like a wildebeest hide is to a pack of jackals. And Ailes himself is long in the tooth. He could, in theory, be pushed out before he wants to go his own way. We shall have to see how this drama plays out.