EMPTY SELLA SYNDROME
(or, THE FAT LADY SINGS)
Demolishing Marshall Sella's puff piece on Roger Ailes and Fox "News" Channel -- in "fair and balanced" style.  Ailes may be grinnin' now… but wait 'til the cows come home!
By Mac MacArthur

Tuesday, June 26, 2001 -- NEW YORK -- My copy of the New York Times arrived at my doorstep late Sunday morning, but in this sleepy burg -- Manhattan -- what can one do?

As usual, over my regular coffee and waffle, I searched for the Sunday New York Times Magazine -- eager to do the crossword puzzle, in pen, of course -- that I couldn't do. Ever.

To my shock and more than dismay, staring up at my still-blurry eyes was His Morbid Obesity, Roger Ailes -- formerly a media-gangster for the likes of Dick Nixon, Ronnie Reagan, and Big Daddy Bush. One wonders aloud whether his ancestors coached Prescott Bush, the mentor of the Bush Criminal clan, on how to slip cash to Hitler in the late 1930s as he, in fact, did.

I thought to myself, "How could the New York Times have known that American Politics Journal had declared all-out war on Ailes and friends less than 24 hours ago?"

Well, humility struck back, and I realized that his moribundness, journalism's Crown Prince of Darkness, the rapist of every ideal known to man -- Mister Roger Ailes -- had simply engineered another media coup, as I imagine his hero, Martin Bohrmann, might have done in Berlin in 1938.

How and why Ailes, a crackpot multimillionaire second-string gag man, found his way onto the cover of the New York Times is a long story -- but suffice it say that as soon as Old Man Sulzberger retired and left Junior in charge, the entire editorial thrust of the once-venerable New York Times has sneakily done a one-eighty under the lack of brilliance evidenced by its editor, whose name I never mention on principal.

After clenching my heart, and shouting for my housekeeper Deborah to bring my personal defibrillator, I read the Headline -- not even large enough to cover Ailes's 657 pound bulk. It read "Fox News is in no way part of the elite, effete bicoastal Liberal media conspiracy. . . But don't let Roger Ailes hear you call it conservative."

It was then that I collapsed in laughter.

The cover story was written by none other than leaky-pen artist Marshall Sella, who until either he had either performed a Judy Nathan on some young assistant to an assistant editor or blackmailed the Sulzburgers, was best known for his silly articles penned for some rag called "Outside Online" -- a magazine for thrill seekers, fortune hunters and travelers (actually, quite a decent magazine).

As anyone who has heard me on the radio in New York, thanks to the wonderfully candid and intellectually pure Alan Colmes, you'll know that I like to know who I'm up against when debating even a fool -- or fools, as is the case here.

Suffice it to say that either the Fat Man himself promised Marshall Sella a lucrative talk show, or Sella has morphed in yet another mediawhore for the far right.

Whatever.

That name, Marshall Sella… Marshall Sella… I knew I was familiar with it, but I couldn't put my finger on just whom he is -- and why his name was emblazoned, in smaller letters of course, under Ailes's.

Now don't get me wrong. I enjoy Ailes. He's a real piece of work. He's a fat, out-of-control slob who epitomizes the ultra-right wing of the Republican Party and absolutely languishes in his role as Czar of a fifth-rate Hollywood-style "News" network that owes its viewership to the greatly declining I.Q. of middle America -- so long forgotten by Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich even as they were 'doing' our brothers in Middle American Trailer Park Land in the tochas.

Marshall Sella…

…and then it struck me. Either Sella was named after a disease, or the disease was named after him.

Coming from a medical family, I remembered an odd malady called EMPTY SELLA SYNDROME

Empty Sella syndrome is a condition where spinal fluid is found within the space for the pituitary gland in the skull -- you know, where the brain is supposed to be. The most common cause is a large opening in a membrane that sits on top of the pituitary and protects it in its socket within the bones at the base of that skull. When this opening is too large, the spinal fluid pressure is transmitted to the pituitary and flattens it.

Rare patients have a congenital empty Sella.

Was this the explanation for an adventure writer writing a story on the latest Rupert Murdoch fantasy (the earliest being the ability to buy himself American citizenship to avoid taxes in his home country) and Ailes's castle in the sky as a fair and balanced news network?

First, lets take a look at Sella's latest fiction, dressed as fact, and then to the second reason I remembered his name -- the beating he once endured from David Letterman.

Sella's main point -- if there is one in his piece (one never knows) -- is that Fox News Channel is allegedly making a real effort to report the News -- "fair and balanced," as Ailes bleats is his goal.

Now, to Sella's credit, even he was forced to say Ailes failed in this regard (as if Ailes was even attempting any such thing.)

But let's examine the thin nature of this story.

Sella, always a sucker for drama -- not a good sign of professional journalism -- opens his accolade of Ailes with a meeting held in the Fat Boy's office. By the way, some right-wing ditto-sheep and even some of our sympathetic readers are upset that I call Ailes "Fat Boy. Well, I can, because I'm almost as fat! So give it a rest, you pantywaists.

Ailes is holding court in what Sella ludicrously calls a "political haven" but correctly points out that a writer like me -- one that tells the truth -- might also call it "the belly of the beast." Yes, I might. It's Ailes's office on Sixth Avenue -- God forbid we refer to it as Avenue of the Americans -- "too Mexican," Ailes would say under his breath.

Ailes, once a third-tier stringer for Dick Nixon, is practically exploding out over his chair like Mr. Creosote in "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life," and acting like other television executives he's seen on television -- most notably, it seems, like Lou Grant, the requisite Fat Boy on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show.

My personal loathing for Ailes rally has nothing to do with his abundant corpulence; it has more to do with his pretentiousness. Ailes is much like Dick Cheney, a man who thinks he's a genius for having gotten a paid-for job at Halliburton that netted him a $100 million in just a few years -- payback for screwing up in Iraq. These guys really think they deserve the money. It's fascinating, truly.

But let's return to Ailes's inner sanctum.

I suppose Sella got a free pass to follow Ailes about in exchange for his -- well, to be nice -- myopia concerning what Ailes and his boss "Droopy" Murdoch really have on the menu. Whatever Sella did get -- if even just a swelled head -- he must have got it in spades.

Let me begin by speaking one truth: Ailes, from the time anyone knew he existed, has practiced perfect the most outstanding element of Hitlerian philosophy: "IT THE LIE IS BIG ENOUGH, THE PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE IT."

>From this, the war cry of nearly the entire Republican Party -- and I am a registered Republican by the way, and not jumping ship à la Jim Jeffords.

I prefer to fight from within.

So Sella went on to build up Ailes's importance and flatter his ego, which is larger than his constantly rubbing thighs. Sella pretended he's been at such 3:30 PM wrap-up meetings before at "other TV news organizations." Ailes is there with Pinocchio act-alike John Moody, the senior vice president for "news" who decides how to twist what FOX puts on the air. Sella describes Moody as a "a wry, quiet man."

Sella, obvious engorged by being at the meeting of some of the "world's greatest minds," describes the "crackle" of Brit Hume's voice through Ailes's speakerphone and the defeat Bush suffered by having his tax cut whittled by a quarter or more that day. Okay -- it was a great victory for the Screamer-in-Chief -- have you noticed how former governor Bush shouts at reporters when answering their questions lately? Is that supposed to frighten them?). Hume and the others agree that Democrats will "attempt" -- "attempt," mind you -- to make this look like a victory for them. Hume, demonstrating his usual cheap-shot snideness, replies to Ailes, "Oh, yes," Hume says sardonically from the box, "it's a stinging defeat for the president."

Hmm… Sella does not capitalize "The President."

Ailes, always the wisenheimer, remarks that "CNN will make it one." Hume makes fun of NBC's riding star Matt Lauer -- who, on an F-Scale score, would out-poll Hume 100 to 1.

Ailes supposedly quips back also making a mockery of Lauer and everyone in the room -- according to Sella -- believes that Lauer is a whore for the liberals.

"You see Lauer's quote the other day?" Ailes asks," He's interviewing the president and says, 'Can you look me in the eye and tell me you're a President committed to cleaning up the environment?' "

"The president should look Lauer in the eye," Ailes continues, "and ask, 'So everybody thinks I'm dumb?' "

Huh?

Did I miss something? Is that funny or something? Well, only if you consider that Lauer would likely reply, "Well, with all respect, 'dumb' is kind of a nice way of putting it."

Moody, once a commie-basher and UPI Moscow Bureau Chief, tells the group that a Louisiana Senator (Breaux?) suggested a death penalty moratorium and then withdrew it when he heard the tape of a 911 call. My God -- how fascinating -- interesting enough for the New York Times?

Ailes, as it is rumored he does, ends this meeting with a clap of his big fat hands and everyone runs for the door -- pinching themselves that they still have a job, and haven't laughed in Roger's face, even once, today.

Sella, no whore for FOX, writes "...there is a buzz in the air at Fox News."

Yes Marshall, it's probably a sign that the FBI or the CIA is monitoring their activity as treason.

Then Sella takes the big fall. He actually writes that the people at Fox News "see themselves and market themselves as correctors of an old injustice: namely, the hegemony of liberal bias in television news."

Has Sella even once thought about the fact that the ultra-right wing of the GOP has successfully drilled that drivel into his and his brother's naïve, underutilized little brains for nearly 15 years now?

There is no liberal bias in the news, because liberal -- in America -- is simply a word interchangeable with intelligent, knowledgeable, compassionate, or giving.

The fact is, Mr. Sella -- that there are no "Liberals" -- and there never were -- in the United States. The liberals are in the United Kingdom -- and in case you haven't checked, that society -- five times the age of ours -- has decent health care available to all people.

Sella once again falls for the big lie.

He calls the ideologues at Fox "geniuses at pitching" the lie that they are "fair and balanced." You know, Marshall, it doesn't take a genius to repeat a lie over and over again until even he believes it is the truth.

Sella is taken in, it seems, by whomever he interviews at Fox News -- but they must have been prepped at one of their weekly Klan meetings lead by some GOP operative or another flown in RNC Headquarters in Washington.

"They see themselves as the only humans equipped to attain platonic balance in TV news," proclaims Sella -- and then to protect himself, because even he smells at least a little rat posing, "Whether neutrality is a realistic goal, or merely conservative backlash in disguise, is an open question. But in either case, Ailes isn't losing sleep over the distinction."

Sella adds -- feverishly -- "[Ailes] is a man untortured by doubt." Yes, Mr. Sella. So were Hitler and Eichmann.

Unlike Hitler -- or his public relations henchman -- Ailes does not deliver Jews to ovens all over Eastern Europe. No. He delivers The Truth to another kind of oven -- the variety made by burning books in massive heaps on cement squares in the Deep South.

What Ailes pretends to fail to recognize is that conservative viewpoints are not labeled as "bias" because they are conservative. They are labeled as "bias" because they are out-and-out lies, covered in some iotaic modicum of truth. Ailes goes on to dismiss the fact that he features only the "Right of the Right" in his promotional ads for Fox by saying -- as might a sociopath -- "…well...tough luck!" This is the same Ailes who recently and loudly claimed that most other journalists are so far to the left that they make his on-air lackeys look conservative!

Would Adolf be proud or what?

Sella fibs when he tells the Times's millions of readers that "everybody in TV news suddenly has a kind word for Roger Ailes. They talk about how he is a genius at marketing, how he's 'quite the packager.' "

Well, I'd like to see those notebooks of quotes. Of course there are few in Sella's piece-- only in generalities. Who on earth with even a modicum of pride, let alone intellect, would celebrate Ailes as the protector of the faith -- the redeemer of the First Amendment?

And just for extra points, Sella indicts Jamie Kellner, the new CEO of Turner Broadcasting/CNN, and MSNBC's Erik Sorenson -- claiming they are reading from Ailes playbook.

Who told Sella that one? Ailes?

Sella claims that when push comes to shove, however, many label Ailes as a "sloganeer."

Well, that's not bad, but I doubt if more than one person could have come up with such a tired old adjective. So I phoned around, spoke to friends of mine in the business, and gathered these comments about Ailes:

"Slothful, arrogant…"

"…mean-spirited unless you're a blonde with big hooters…"

"A real propaganda man.

"…fat bastard, twister of minds…"

There were other monikers I won't convey here.

Sella now shifts a bit, making certain he isn't entirely crucified on Monday morning. He writes, "The reason Ailes is not being as overtly savaged as he was only a few years ago is that Fox News Channel, or FNC, has generated numbers that have stunned the industry."

Well, this is true only to a point -- the numbers are hardly stunning or surprising at all.

As John Locke, the father of Western Educational theory, once remarked, "The masses are asses" [I think this was stolen by Ayn Rand as well]. Of course Ailes & Crew's ratings might jump sky high: he's preaching to the lowest common denominator, the undereducated, lower-middle-class lumpenproletarian who thinks that anything he hears or sees on television, especially from blondes with huge boob, must be the God's honest truth. You would not believe the hate mail I have gotten from Fox fans, people Ailes call the "fine Americans" from the "Red States" -- the states that supported that Bush imbecile in the last presidential election.

Sella also claims that Ailes is catching the "prized demographic" -- adults between 25 and 54 who watch cable news.

What? First -- who watches cable news? Second, that's a pretty wide demographic, isn't it Marshall? It seems to encompass nearly the entire country. Where are you getting this pap? From Ailes and his toadies?

Sella, also fallaciously claims that CNN has lost 28 percent of its viewership while Fox has gained 430%! Of course, he doesn't bother to add that this could mean that the entire Fox News network was only seen by a few hundred people at any given time and now it's viewed by a few thousand.

Well, okay, that's mean -- maybe ten thousand?

Sella also declares that Fox News is worth $3 billion today and implies this was Ailes's doing.

Well, that's balderdash -- it was Old Man Murdoch's doing, and the worth of the Network has little to do with who Ailes deems fascist enough to put on the air and more to do with position, cable deals, sports programming and other more esoteric but very profitable rigmarole of television network evaluation.

Perhaps Sella should compare that figure to the worth of Turner Broadcasting and CNN. I haven't heard about Iraqis fighting each other to get in front of the cameras at Fox Baghdad. That's because there isn't any Fox Baghdad, nor is there a Fox Paris, nor is there any Fox News Channel bureau anywhere at all.

It is a given that Fox would lead CNN in the 60 some odd million households where the two compete in prime time. Fox panders to the stupid, the silly, the exploitative, the monosyllabic; CNN is a cut above. If I were the average Joe, I'd watch Fox too -- if not just for the blondes with the big bosoms and long legs. Anyway, CNN has Wolf Blitzer -- another stealth reporter for the ultra-right posing in a beard to throw us off. You remember Wolf, don't you? He spent the last few years building his lesser-than-life career on the backs of Hillary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton.

He made Ailes proud to be an American -- I can guarantee that.

It is also difficult to believe that 65 million "families" are watching cable news in Prime Time at all. As a matter of fact, they aren't, because that would mean that more than two thirds of the nation is either tuned to Fox or CNN during this period. That's bull. Fox may be winning "something" by 30% -- the Executive Office Building, maybe, but that ain't America.

I'm not quite sure where Sella is getting his information -- but it might be from Nielsen -- already under a decades-long attack for producing what one might characterize as "questionable" or "arguable" statistics about who is watching what. But I'll give them a break, and agree with Sella that the Red States watch Fox, and the Blue States (i.e. the President-Elect Gore states) watch CNN.

And what happened to the big three anchors? Are they chopped liver?

Sella continually uses the words like "soaring" or "stunning" to describe what's going on at Fox, but if the truth be known, FOX is still on very shaky ground, and still fighting for a true share of the pie. In fact, Fox News produces so little, it cannot afford even one foreign bureau.

The numbers from The News Corporation's own annual report belie Sella's -- we assume really Ailes's -- financial conclusions about the worth of Fox News.

News Corp. operates in six general areas:

1. Filmed Entertainment -- Largely made up from the old 20th Century Fox holdings

2. Television -- made up from the Fox Television Network -- which does not include the cable news station.

3. Cable Networks programming, which does

4. Newspapers, like the London Times, and other around the world including the worst (or the best) of the tabloids.

5. Book Publishing: Most notable weekend-trash-reading publisher Harper Collins

6. And "Other," a catchall for other Murdoch investments.

But where's the real value in News Corp.? On one hand it appears that FOX films lead the way, with cable network programming running a dismal fourth against film, television, and newspapers (if you can call them that). But on the other hand, cable network produces about $1.8 billion in revenue for Murdoch and his stockholders, so things can't be all bad. In fact, operating income for cable network programming is last on the list -- tying "Other" in the bar chart in The News Corporation Annual Report 2000… and Fox News is not even mentioned in the latest annual report with the cable network programming group, which is dominated by Fox Sports.

You do the numbers.

Worse for Sella -- all the money seems to come from Fox Sports programming, not from Ailes's news operation.

Sella tells us that not only does Fox soar, but it also "Leaps." Yes, it leaps to the lowest common denominator.

It supposedly also "leaps" in political "access" -- whatever that means.

Sella, who must also have free access to the White House -- every office, and every room -- tells us, "Most of the television sets in the Bush White House are tuned to Fox News; it's the network of preference in this administration."

That's odd. Why would White House staff want to listen to their own propaganda? Wouldn't they be more inclined to watch CNN, which Sella claims is a left-of-center network? Wouldn't Ari Fleischer want to monitor all those attacks on Bush that are supposedly emanating from all cable news outlets other than Fox?

Sella -- such a chump, it now seems -- reports that Fox isn't always so kind to the White House. Just before the election it "broke" the story that the Bush Brat had once been arrested for D.U.I.

Yes, Marshall, that's true, but Fox broke the story because that's the way the Karl Rove wanted it. It's always better to break a story as early as possible, and then to go on the offensive. Had the story sat embargoed at CNN and the big three until election night eve, Bush would have lost the presidency. So Marshall, there's another lesson: Fox wasn't being fair and balanced in reporting the drunken George the Lesser's antics -- they were again acting as the directed, or undirected, whore of the Bush campaign itself.

Marshall Sella, a political neophyte for sure, really has no standing to write an article of this ilk, mostly because he knows nothing about hardball politics in the United States. He goes on to tell Times's readers that no matter about leaking the DUI story -- the next day Bush gave his "one and only" interview with none other than Carl Cameron of Fox and, surprise, surprise, Bush took his first question as president from none other than the puppet-like Jim Angle -- also (miraculously) of Fox!

Gee, Marshall, that's really interesting. Did it ever occur to you that Cameron and Angle were simply the receptacles into which Rove began to pay back the tens of millions in free advertising that had been doled out by Fox News during the 2000 presidential campaign?

Sella quotes Brit Hume, the channel's best-known face: "We're getting a fair shake in the Bush administration… Not gettin' any goodies, but a fair shake. The Clinton administration -- they hated us!"

Well I'll be damned! Hume, a man who can lie straight-faced and still look like an Eagle Scout, is no dummy. But he isn't that smart, either. Let me paraphrase what was going through his head as he talked with Sella:

"This guy Sella is an idiot, but I'd better not let him think we have a field office in the West Wing, so I'll add some stuff about 'ain't getting' and 'no goodies' to throw him a curve."

Roger Ailes, according to Sella "is a pugnacious and jokey man."

Jokey? What's this word? Sella uses it more than once in his piece on Ailes -- which is really off-putting, inasmuch as Ailes is more of a joke than "jokey." He correctly labels Ailes as a suspicious little bulldog who wouldn't trust his mother not to deliver him arsenic-laced purple Kool Aid in his lunch box. He calls Ailes "a man of appetites" -- well that's fer sure, as C.D. Donehay might say as she snaps her figurative wad of Juicy Fruit on National Television each morning on Fox. His appetite spans the gastronomical world -- from Le Cirque 2000 to Lutece to less illustrious Manhattan eateries; it's rumored that Ailes can down three racks of pork ribs at Virgil's BBQ -- just at lunch.

Ailes's obesity is most likely linked to the guilt he feels, buried somewhere in his corpulent heart, for putting one over on the masses who count on him and his motley crew to tell them the "fair and balanced" truth. He must eat himself into a stupor just over having been a creepy toadie for Dick Nixon, not to mention the evil empire that moved old Ron Reagan from one of the nicest guys on earth to a puppet for the Neofascist movement in America.

In short, Ailes probably has some semblance of a conscience -- but is too greedy to pay heed. So, like many of us, he eats to quell his anxiety.

Naturally, Ailes goes ballistic when anyone -- anyone -- accuses him of being a mediawhore for the ultra right. That's part of the Big Lie theory espoused by Hitler and his minions. When someone smart enough to see through you attacks you on the facts, then just simply go nuts, punch the accuser in the nose, act outrageously put out, and people will believe you even more.

Sella, the dupe, unfortunately doesn't get it -- and waxes eloquent on Ailes temper, writing that Roger is repelled "aesthetically" and from "a business standpoint" because Ailes knows that other partisan networks have tried to report the news -- "fair and balanced" -- and it has not worked!

You have to laugh.

Sella reports: "[Ailes] shuns the prospect of being marginalized as he would shun a rabid dog. 'There are more conservatives on Fox,' Ailes says. 'But we are not a conservative network. That disparity says far more about the competition.' "

Sella couldn't be more of an Ailes marionette if he tried. And I believe he didn't try.

Once Sella bought into the Ailes lies about "fair and balanced" Fox, it was easy for Fat Boy to move on to bigger and bigger lies.

He tells Sella that not once do CNN and "Big Three Network" viewers see a Pro-Life opinion -- and then goes on to "prove" the non-provable, claiming incorrectly that there is no such term as the "religious left" in an adolescent attempt to demonstrate that conservatives must be better because they are more often referred to as the "religious right."

One look, for example, at Rev. Ray Dubuque's www.joinhugs.org web site proves the corpulent Ailes's assertion false. Now, I might offer that Ailes is simply stupid -- but he's not. He knows well that the religious right has about as much power in this country as Olive Oyl, but he proceeds anyway in the decade-long style of idiot Neofascists all so eager to send America back to the 18th Century in nearly all ways -- save "Star Wars."

Ailes also posits that the mainstream media (defined as news organizations that largely attempt to get out the truth and are successful) sees only two types of people -- "moderates and right-wing nuts." The fact that this is not true, and never was, does not phase Ailes. He enjoys spouting fabrications and twisted truths. In fact, most people with minds -- and that includes most Republicans -- prefer moderates to Neofascist punks like Newt Gingrich.

But Ailes won't tell you this, because he is hoping that the entire GOP is soon filled with failed-lawyers-turned-prosecutors -- an easy job to get when you can't get into a decent law firm. This is the caliber of "leadership" Ailes and Murdoch want to see running the country -- a gaggle of morons bent on throwing every person of color -- every "leftie" and every other citizen who doesn't agree with "pull yourself up by you OWN bootstraps," 12-step mentality -- into a federal hoosegow.

Sella claims that Ailes's goal at Fox is "to deregulate facts, not unlike the way Republicans prefer to govern."

If it weren't so sad, I'd laugh.

Fox News Channel isn't the first cable network that Ailes has used to destroy and belittle the truth.

During his stint at CNBC, he put Geraldo Rivera and the infamous Chris Matthews of "Hardball" on the air, along with the repulsive Charles Grodin -- a basket-case limousine liberal who would be best off in a home for balding B-movie actors.

Supposedly all three were "liberals" -- but Matthews, who once worked for Democrats including former House Speaker and unabashed liberal Democrat Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, is far from a liberal leaner himself. The indecent little louse (whose own staff, by the way, loathes him) set out, under Ailes's marching orders, to morph into an abusive right wing stooge leading a cadre of cable talk morons into a good ol' lynching of the Clintons and Al Gore -- and everything and everyone else left of center.

Matthews, of course, is the only one of the three on CNBC who pulls any ratings at all -- and Ailes knew this would be the case. In fact, it was a good friend of mine who lives close to Geraldo's $8 million dollar mansion (complete with yacht, tennis courts and Olympic sized pool) who gave the idea to Geraldo's wife C.C. that Geraldo should move to the political fore rather than chase mafia gold under the water -- not Ailes.

Ailes still uses the three "plants" he arranged at CNBC as an excuse for putting illiterate bully Sean Hannity -- who has less than a high-school education -- on the air at Fox News Channel. Hannity caters to the worst in society, angry Mark-Fuhrman-type rabble who blame intellectuals for their own failed lives, a similar type to the frustrated minions Hitler stirred up to follow his cause. On the air, both on New York drive-time radio and at Fox News Channel, Hannity can be best described as a laughable tonsorial wanna-be with a southern frat-boy pompadour and a mind shaped by self-hatred and defensiveness. Hannity goes through guests like a tornado of inanity, shouting them down and proclaiming "It's my show, not yours."

Ailes points out that he has also put a man I admire and like, Alan Colmes, at the desk with Hannity to "balance the playing field" -- and Colmes, a man of principal and a gentlemen, is good at making Hannity look like the street urchin he is. The truth is, however, that Colmes is saddled with a viewership of ultra-right proto-McCarthyites at best and outright latter-day Nazis at worst, and a format (probably crafted by Ailes) which does not allow Colmes to attack Hannity head on for the cretin he is -- but rather carves up the "equal time" in such a way that the two actually have their own shows within the one hour rather than going at it in a format closer to CNN's Crossfire, which at least had the sense put the man who "baptized" Grover Norquist, Tucker Carlson (complete with bow tie and prepped out hair) in the seat once occupied by "Count" Robert Novak, who is no doubt busy weekday evenings these days replenishing his blood supply in Carpathia.

By rights, if Ailes was indeed fair, he would give Colmes his own show, for a solid hour, right after the biggest running lie in television history leaves the air -- I speak here candidly of Bill O'Reilly, Fox's answer to Lord Haw-Haw and Father Coughlin.

To demonstrate (to others) how fair Ailes really is, Ailes keeps his office packed with "examples of liberal bias." Of course, these are mere props to bolster his story that he's truly concerned about this non-issue. And Sella is suckered once again -- buying into Ailes horse hockey that "Journalism became a mechanism of advocacy in the 60's," and that "These days, the Gore states are the intelligentsia; the red states are regarded by these people as morons. The intelligentsia would like you to go ahead and send your money to them, and they'll spend it for you, because you're too stupid to do it yourself. That's absolute-elitist-horse-dung-Socialist thinking!"

Well, Ailes has no point here either -- but Sella pretends there is one.

Journalism NEVER became a mechanism of revolutionary thought in America -- especially in the 1960s. During the period between 1959 and 1975, students and minorities became the tool of journalism, at a time when journalists actually had minds and didn't write simply to get a chance to be on television someday and earn lots of money.

Journalists, it is evident, looked around, saw the carnage of Vietnam and institutionalized racism in America and, like any thinking people, decided that enough was enough. It was print journalism that initially boiled the pot and drove idealistic students to the streets -- and it was those idealistic students that pushed the nation back from the abyss of the hard right after only a brief stint just left of it. Ailes, who is no student of history, is, however, an expert at conveniently "modifying" history when it suits his fancy.

Sella, by now deeply entrenched in the lie-factory at Fox, begins to take on the stench of the cable news network himself when he calls senior executives "plain and confiding" when they speak of politics. As an example, he looks to John Moody -- a nobody a few years ago, and not much more now -- who tells Sella in a fit of understatement: "Personally, I'm right of center," that he believes that the Pope "may in actual fact be a living saint," and yet "ever mindful of journalistic propriety, Moody distances himself from stories involving Catholicism;" 'quaintly,' recused himself from stories about the Boy Scouts when his son was a member of its ranks and Moody was a cub master.

Is Moody telegraphing he's a homophobe because the Church -- steeped in don't ask, don't tell history -- is homophobic as well?

The syrup from Sella is nauseating.

Moody and Ailes, writes Sella, are birds of a feather. More like Siamese twins joined at the pubis, I'd say. His description of the two men sounds more like a description of two lovers than business colleagues. Moody finishes Ailes's sentences; the duo share a media world view, and love to focus on the crimes of a death row inmate rather than the fact that the dead man walking's trial may have been a rout. They each pride themselves in proclaiming prosecutor's stories as facts embedded in cement, and defense lawyer's arguments for compassion, pity, or fair trials a load of poppycock.

Ailes, a noted sloganeer, penned the phrase "fair and balanced" much like Hitler penned the phrase "the final solution." It isn't a coincidence that the Fox Wehrmacht who now run and staff at Fox pronounce the phrase as id it were a single German "Wort" -- Fehrundbalinst! -- as they goose-step and raise an outstretched arm to Hochfeldmarschall Ailes.

Ailes, like Goebbels and America's other little Nazi, Pat Buchanan, links himself to the "common man," writes Sella simpatico. Ailes calls people that think "elitists" who lord it over the Corn Belt. He claims as a blanket truth that farmers resent educated men and women because they think they're smarter than Midwesterners.

It never occurs to Ailes -- a Blue State fat elitist himself -- that maybe he and the sometimes over-educated academic elite really are smarter than the average working man, and that there's really nothing wrong with that fact. Ailes, as much an intellectual elitist as any figure left of center, again adopts Goebbels's masterful posture -- claiming he loves blue-collar food and lying about ordering macaroni and cheese from the "kiddie" menu at five-star hotels he haunts when traveling.

The fact is that few five star hotels have "kiddie menus" -- and even fewer feature "mac and cheese" on their menus. But, seemingly, like everything else in his undeserved rich and pitiful life, Ailes demonstrates a kind of sociopathy even in this most tedious detail about his personal habits. One expects that he will tell Sella that he still uses pages from a Sears Catalog in the toilet.

If anything, Ailes is too old to be "in touch" with anyone other than octogenarians as he pushes their brand of ignorance to our cousins in the Midwest. He began his career with the nearly forgotten Mike Douglas Show as a sort of producer to this phony nice-guy Douglas, whose biggest claim to fame was how little he spent on his hairpiece. From there Ailes was jobless at times, and finally -- like a bad penny -- found his way back into the world of Fantasy Republicanism -- a world that has protected him for decades now, and made him into a kind of superhero, a manufactured man of achievement who can be counted on to lie to the public to further political greed.

Ailes, entertaining ferret that he is, tells Sella, as he does anyone who will listen, that it is Old Rupert Murdoch whose "vision" he manages today.

Well, what a surprise, but one doubts that Murdoch -- a third-rate emulation of Citizen Kane -- has the brains to lay out such a well-articulated and somewhat frighteningly well-executed 24/7 Republican advertisement Ailes calls fair and balanced news. However, Ailes is an accomplished ass-kisser when he has to be, and his bull slung and eaten by Sella is just one example of this enviable talent. I'll also bet that Ailes may have made it to K-Street-urchin Sally Quinn's A-List this year -- especially after this New York Times Magazine cover.

Sella actually calls Murdoch's holdings "right-leaning" even though every bag lady on 2nd Avenue knows that if it leaned any further it would topple into the Danube. Like Citizen Kane, Murdoch owns venues that appeal to the lowest and broadest common denominator -- the weak and the stupid -- and most prominently include tabloids: The New York Post and The Sun -- but also The Weekly Standard and his "flagship" rag, The Times of London, which Murdoch completely disfigured and virtually tore to shreds late in the last century.

Ailes claims that the media world assumed that Fox News would emulate the right, and cater to the GOP party line -- and get this wonderful piece of shtick: "'There'd been four failures at that,' Ailes says. 'This was a different mission entirely. But we had no Newsgathering infrastructure, no studios, no employees, no equipment. The press was laughing at us.' "

They still are, Roger, despite your swelled head from taking in a naïve writer like Sella. And you forgot to mention one think on your laundry list: No Talent.

Fox still has little in the way of newsgathering, infrastructure, studios and employees. In fact, one could say that Fox only excels at scandal gathering. Its infrastructure is yet shaky, and its on-air employees are the laughingstock of world media, save for a few.

Yet Ailes, still immersed in Big Lie composition, feeds Sella a bunch of statistics that the New Kid on the Block, with little money, no bureaus, and little talent even today could attack the monster CNN and the Big Three networks by making its editors "tell both sides of every story and take stories to the 'next level' of information."

Shades of the Twilight Zone.

I assume the next level for Fox News Channel is the next lower level where not only is Jesse Jackson referred to as "the Reverend" in the snidest possible inflection, but then the size and girth of his private parts are discussed in detail by the Valley Girl Donehay -- complete with exploding graphics.

Sella -- who by now, I am convinced, is about to become a paid Fox flak -- actually writes this:

"In gray corporate lingo, this was pitched as a standard so exacting that no network had dared try it in the past. Embedded in this discourse about 'reporting stories that competitors don't cover' was a word one rarely sees in memoranda: Haven. Ailes sought, in his fractured prose, to 'position cable channel as haven for viewers looking for relief from the one-sided reporting by competition.' "

How can one help but laugh out loud when a writer so blatantly reports what could not be the truth except on some scripted treatise designed only to convince dupes like him to believe this drivel?

Ailes, in an uncharacteristic fit of candor, tells Sella more bull at Patsy's eatery in New York as he stuffs himself yet again, and emotes, "News is what people are interested in. You can watch 'Dateline NBC' and, arguably, every one of those stories was done by 'A Current Affair' five years ago. We're just getting the same girls to dance around shinier poles."

A Classic White Trash viewpoint, huh? "…getting girls to dance around shinier poles…" -- there couldn't be a more truthful and revealing statement about Ailes and the entire News Corp. operation: a sexist, sex-crazed, drunk-with-power, Neo-Nazi propaganda outfit bent on catering to myths held dear by anti-intellectual viewers and the Republican Party, now beginning its death throes as history tells us it must.

Ailes really drops his cards here -- and reveals to Sella that he is nothing but a crass boor -- familiar with the sort of drooling drunks that frequent "Scores" and have sex in the kitchen with crack whores who earn their drug money taking it all off.

Sella, of course, buys the pose -- hook, line, sinker, and, of course, shinier pole.

He labels Ailes as "professorial, but guarded." Professorial? Guarded? How about "bombastic and malevolent, cagey and untrustworthy" -- but wide-eyed Sella just keeps blowing Ailes's horn in a style that would have made a Nazi journalist proud.

At this juncture, let me speak of my use of the words Nazi, Hitler and the surnames of his most infamous henchmen. I am often criticized by those on both the left and the right -- and even some knee-jerk moderates -- for using flashpoint labels like these to describe the New Right.

I will continue to use these words, for I am convinced, not emotionally, but intellectually, that Newt Gingrich and all the men and women that worked with and followed him have taken, and directly or indirectly learned, from Hitler's propaganda strategies and tactics -- which are still regarded as a frightening but successful strategy that duped the German people into believing the compost Der Führer spewed.

Remember, it is easy (not to mention convenient) to disparage comparisons to Hitler, Nazis and other fascists to describe any American. However, one must face the truth: America, in fact, is a perfect breeding ground for suited skinheads like Ailes and his ilk for the very reason that she is a nation with unparalleled freedom of political expression.

With that freedom comes the responsibility -- even if unpopular -- to call a spade a spade, and a Nazi a Nazi.

I believe that the Republican Party is now firmly in the clutches of a mind-twisting minority of 1984-like characters who seek only money and the power that goes with it. These men and women cannot be described in any other way that as Neofascist or the New Nazis of America.

Ailes, like the wanna-be Strom Thurmond that he is, recently sired a baby at age 61. Did he do this from loneliness? Or did he do it to demonstrate his virility -- or more precisely counteract an image of his lack thereof? Why would a man, so sensitive to the working-class, father a child that most likely won't ever know him -- or lose him just at the time he needs a father?

I point this out only as an additional piece of the puzzle toward understanding Ailes and other men like him. They are self-involved, even to the point of potentially injuring their children. Of course, one might guess that Ailes will declare a story, truthful or not, that baby Zachary is demonstrable proof of his own pro-life attitudes. Yes, this is harsh -- but a man like Ailes needs harsh treatment, for he is attempting, along with Murdoch, to overthrow principles long held in our nation, and he is doing too good a job at it to be left alone -- or to be treated under the rules of the Marquis of Queensbury.

"I don't want the kid growin' up in a fouled-up world," remarks Ailes. Spoken like a true, loving father, don't you think? "The Kid." What do you truly wish for him, Roger? Do you long for a world where fools run the candy store, where America is hated more and more for her cruelty and lack of compassion, where she embarks on yet another preparation for cataclysmic world war under the cloak of defensive weaponry like the Rumsfeld retread of Reagan-BushDad's Star Wars? Do you want him to gather his opinions based upon what he reads in the trash that your boss publishes -- or even from your own " Fehrundbalinst" lies?

You must be joking. You absolutely must be. For if you dare state the truth, you are far more dangerous to everyone around you than I contemplated.

Sella then proceeds to embarrass Fox's competitors. He points out the CNN laid off 400 employers -- but fails to explain that these were largely people involved in the CNN websites which are a profit drain on the new AOL-Time Warner. Sella implies that CNN is emulating Fox's hyped-up look. He quotes Jamie Kellner, the new head of CNN, but chooses to make that quote more defensive than realistic -- even including laudatory statements about Fox supposedly made by Kellner -- statements I find hard to believe.

He then finishes CNN off by quoting Dennis Murray calling CNN "the water company", and Fox the utility that makes "appointments" -- "like friends."

Talk about enduring nausea!

Sella goes on to instruct us about "how hard it is" for Fox to give "news the appeal of a sitcom..." and applauds Ailes for his attention to commissioned "research" that demonstrated that television news viewers believe that news is somehow twisted to the left. He fails, however, to tell the reader that this is true only because the Republican National Committee and its state and local party apparatchiks have been pushing this fraudulent theme for nearly 16 years -- every chance they get.

And why?

Hard-right Neoconfederate fascists and the New Right need to brainwash the public into believing that they cannot trust the truth, and must instead trust the Big Lie. It's so elegant a play, so bold, that it's nearly opaque.

Sella buys the story that Ailes handpicked nobodies like Shepard Smith, a hunky Mississippi cracker, and puppet-like Carl Cameron for a network spot when neither had any experience in "The Big Show." The truth is that Ailes couldn't afford -- either budgetarily or, more important, by his own reputation -- to attract anyone of stature from the pool of television journalists and news readers who simply wouldn't be caught dead working for any News Corp. property -- or worse, working for Ailes.

Fox News Channel is testament to a frightening disease invading America: that the average Jane and Joe can't concentrate long enough to see an entire half hour of news and instead dart through the channels looking for hype, scandal, mockery of others, racism, death, destruction and worse. Instead of reporting hard news, Fox is helping to dumb down America - the latest incarnation of the systematic theme of Gingrichian political theory for nearly two decades now.

In truth, Fox acts like the Reader's Digest of television news while delivering National Enquirer content.

Sella The Naïve tells us that Fox, by day, is a "shimmering testament" to "hard reporting -- but surrounded by breezy chit chat format"

Nothing could be further from the truth.

What Fox is turns out to be a no-truth network surrounded by ultra-right-wing commentators who may look like the boy and girl next door while feeding you half-truths, outright lies, innuendo, insults aimed at anything not ultra-right, and more.

Prime examples of this hoaxster "journalism" and "commentary" are Brit Hume's "Special Report;" "The O'Reilly Factor," and "Hannity & Colmes," where, even though Colmes makes a masterful effort at truth telling, scam artist Hannity dominates the viewer psyche by spewing the longest-running spate of hateful and ignorantly shouted speech ever to hit the airwaves. Even Neil Cavuto -- a supposed Wall Street maven -- engages in left-bashing as often as possible. Cavuto, once one of the guy-leads at CNBC, threw in the towel for the money and moved to Fox, drooling with anticipation.

Let's address Hume. For more than year, we were treated to Hume as a mere "panelist" on Fox News Sunday, the Sunday morning pundit show broadcast on Fox's flagship broadcast network and hosted by Tony Snow. Snow, who isn't quite like the rest of the Fox News crowd -- but learning the hard way -- often reported the week's political news in a somewhat balanced but still right-leaning manner. Hume came on to twist the truth, along with a panel of right-wing hypocrites who usually earned their outside income working for right wing publications. Mara Liasson, the aging Public Radio 'leftie,' was on this panel, but did -- and still does -- a very poor job of "balancing" the likes of Hume, Snow, and others who seem to beat her into submission. Now, Hume -- as reward for his part-time "snow" jobs on Sundays, hosts a five-day-a-week evening show -- repeated in the early morning to catch the "working man" before he's "off to the mines." The show features the same motley crew -- sans Tony Snow, who may have been sent to the backbenches for making even a minor attempt at real journalism and factual commentary.

The show's other three players include Morton Kondracke -- a lightweight "journalist" whom I cannot believe has a job at all, let alone as an on-air "expert" for Fox. Kondracke's claim to fame is that he's with Roll Call, a really silly rag -- kind of like a local scandal sheet for Capitol Hill. He is joined by Fred Barnes -- "The Owlet" as he's know in inner-circle District offices. Barnes works for none other than Rupert Murdoch at one of the nation's most hilarious political news magazines, The Weekly Standard. Yes, it is the standard for absolutely crystal-clear mediawhoring for the GOP.

Lately, Bill Sammon, who has looked a lot better, joined the Hume panel. Sammon "writes" for the Washington Times, a critter-sheet owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed weirdo religious fascist who fled South Korea to set up shop in America, where he owns the nation's most laughable newspaper. Recently, Sammon celebrated the "best-seller" status (because all the copies were probably bought up by Dick Scaife and Murdoch) -- of his book of lies that he conveniently titles "At Any Cost -- How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election." Of course, even the title doesn't say which election, so Sammon must already be aware that future historians won't be looking to him for tutorials during the 25th Century. "At Any Cost" is published, of course, by Chicago-based propaganda ministry Regnery Publishing. which counts among its authors such giants of pseudo-intellect and balanced "fictional non-fiction" as Michael Barone (the Wall Street mediawhore for the RNC), Michael Hyatt (whose latest claim to fame is some science fiction titled "Invasion of Privacy - Are You Being Watched?"["Detailed information about you is available to just about anyone who wants it--corporations, fund-raisers, criminals, government agents, and more"]), and master intellect, David Limbaugh (author of the stunner "Absolute Power," "the only case-by-case dissection of the beast that was the Clinton Justice Department").

You just have to laugh at that last boner! The fact that Janet Reno was perhaps the only honest person in Washington at the time seems to have escaped Mr. Limbaugh's supple mind.

And let us not forget the other masterworks that Regnery has published in past years. Who could? The list is dazzling. My personal Regnery favorite is "America's Thirty Years War: Who is Winning?" written by Balint Vazsonyi, a Hungarian-born "historian" and world-renowned concert pianist, which Regnery claims alerts America "[w]ith unmistakable clarity… [about] how every time America moves away its founding principles it moves in the direction of the only real alternative-where a fantasy of 'social justice' is the pursued through ever-greater government control." Cue the laugh track!

Regnery also cashes in on the aged by publishing trash "cure" books like "The Arthritis Cure Cookbook" and "The Arthritis Cure Fitness Solution" as well as multiple how-to books on Diabetes. Strange that a publisher would purposely put out books that trade on the elderly's fears of pain and at the same time publish, almost by fiat, myriad books of lies spewed by right-wing fanatics.

Regnery also publishes their "dee-luxe" edition of "The Cox Report: The Unanimous and Bipartisan Report of the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China," with a foreword by Casper Weinberger (isn't he a pardoned criminal or something?) - a Regnery0-penned blurb describes this gem as a "shocking account of how the People's Republic of China has targeted America for subversion, high-tech theft, and nuclear challenge." Of course, the report was only "shocking" to idiots like Cox -- who'll never see Washington again despite this sad attempt to become popular -- even in his own district.

Best of all is the unintentionally funny "Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton," by none other than Barbara Olson, the toothy blonde harridan wife of "Perjurer-General" Ted Olson, who aided and abetted the criminals in the Supreme Court in stealing the 2000 presidential election for George DumbBellYuh. Ambition-driven Mrs. Olsen "reveals" the real Hillary -- including what is described by Regnery as "her often disturbing complicity in her husband's wrongdoing, and her big-government agenda for the future"

Then there's "High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton," by the high-strung, ranting, anorexic-looking Ann Coulter, the emaciated Queen Bitch of the Clinton lynching who is so ugly inside and out that she complains she can't get a date.

I know, I know -- I apologize for the longish list above, but -- kidding aside -- it is important for the reader to understand the depth and breadth of what Hillary Clinton called a "right wing conspiracy" -- and which attack these right-wing operatives called "The Big Lie" or "Big Laugh," again attempting to pulling the wool over America's often dimwitted eyes.

Look at this list -- and particularly newspaper accounts of the ludicrous Sammon book, and the people who fund and publish such things. It's a disgrace -- not because the work was published, but because people might read it and NOT treat it like Mad Magazine or SPY as they should. Bill Sammon's quickie Gore-trashing, lying tome only underscores my theory as it applies to the similarities between Hitler's propaganda machine and the Republican Party's. The very title of his work - asserting falsely that Gore "stole" the election -- is an excellent example of Neofascist tactics. They know that more than 60% of Americans think that Bush stole the election with the aid of right-wing Supreme Court Justices -- so they get a dupe like Sammon to write a book saying the opposite. The average guy really believes, and this is said with no malevolence, that anything "in a book" must be true. It must be, because why would anyone spend the money to print it and publish if it weren't? The average guy also thinks that the media would alert him if the book were a lie. But they won't, will they? The news media today is nothing but a money machine. It respects other money machines. Honor among thieves, they used to call it.

And that applies to all media, not just Fox News.

But Fox moves ten steps further than most by celebrating its lies, concocting bigger and bigger lies, and aiding and abetting publishers like Regnery which once had a good man at its head -- the current publisher's father.

Back to Hume's Special Report: on the supposed left sits Juan Williams of the Chicago Sun Times and NPR, who caves in on every point made by the three right wing chimps I just described; Jeff Birnbaum of Fortune magazine, who is best at appearing to the left of right but really isn't (look who he writes for); and last but not least Mara Liasson, the most prominent sell-out to Ailes. Liasson manages once every three months or so to actually get a point across that could be -- could be -- seen as left of center.

The point: Ailes and Hume are constantly and neurotically stacking the deck in favor of Neofascists posing as journalists on "Special Report."

And then there's Bill O'Reilly. What can I say about the man?

In a word: asshole.

I don't think many people, even Rush Limbaugh or Hannity, have more a capacity to polarize Americans with hate than O'Reilly.

Unlike Hannity, O'Reilly is over-educated, but book smart only, with little native intelligence, it seems. He too engages in this "It's my show buddy" attitude similar to Hannity's, and he too strains too hard to become an American icon, when in reality he's simply another right wing mediawhore buffoon.

But watch O'Reilly, because he is indeed a master of concealing the Big Lie with even Bigger lies. For instance, O'Reilly -- purposefully and with much preparation -- inserts little bits of left wing opinion from himself (and only himself) every once in while during every show as proof he is "fair and balanced."

He is also careful to inject what appears to be non-political or apolitical commentary or intercourse into each show - while remaining focused on the underpinning of these segments remaining purely right wing.

I must admit that I once loathed O'Reilly -- but I do admire his tenacity and his ego. When his ratings nemesis, blowhard Chris Matthews, had the audacity to begin broadcasting his right wing Mafioso-style show from university campuses across the nation last year, O'Reilly instructed his staff to do the same for him.

Unfortunately O'Reilly chose a "Play School" to open this gambit. The hall was packed (how I'm not sure) and the audience jubilantly supported O'Reilly who preened and strutted the boards like a peacock at Versailles.

However, the value of the show was lost because of that audience, made up of young boys and girls more interested in sex, drugs and rock and roll than in anything O'Reilly said, did, or does in the future. These kids are the future marketing managers for Pepsi. They are the future of professional wrestling and football, the breeders who continue to populate the underpopulated regions of our nation only to remind the Blue States just who's boss.

O'Reilly, if he truly wants to impact public policy -- and I believe he is at least demented enough to believe he can (surely more so than the passé Rush Limbaugh) - he must prove his stuff to the true policymakers of this nation.

Guess what, Bill? They ain't sitting on the House and Senate floor, they're sitting in staff offices you'll never see, and in boardrooms across the country. These men and women laugh at you, but appreciate the dollars and tax money you bring to the economy. If you fail to entertain them -- even for a few months -- you'll find yourself in the gutter.

Sad but true.

I would guess that if anyone on the Fox News Channel appeals to Ailes most, it must be Sean Hannity. Both are cut from the same cloth. Hannity is a Northeast "cracker" -- a man who views himself as polished, urbane, and natively intelligent. He shunned school and he shuns reality, preferring to become the chief parrot of the Neofascist movement in America today -- but not the most widely heard, much to his chagrin. Hannity could be compared to Joe Garagiola reporting deep news from the United Nations, or Martha Stewart commenting on the latest superstar of the WWF. This boy has absolutely no command of anything -- but does posses the biggest, meanest mouth in cable television, and spends more money on custom-tailored suits that look more like they are off the rack from Sears than even Geraldo's.

Sartorially, one has to comment that if you look closely at Ailes's black (slimming?) suit in the Times's spread this past Sunday, you will see that the fabric of his suit is so poor or threadbare that all the stiff interlining shows on the photographs because the photographer's flash went right through the black outer fabric to the inner workings of the jacket -- exposing the stiff gray felt panels that keep people from seeing just how many rolls of fat occupy it. I know, because my tailor does the same! So Hannity and Ailes share more than similar backgrounds and similar viewpoints -- or lack thereof.

Sitting next to Hannity -- but as far away as possible it seems -- is Alan Colmes, Ailes's hand-selected Yang to Hannity's Yin. Colmes is incisive, intellectually balanced and never coarse. In almost all ways, Colmes is the superior of the two. His clothes don't make this man. His hair is conservatively non-perfect, while Hannity's is sprayed so stiff it would snap off at even the slightest touch. Colmes wears his spectacles unabashedly. If Hannity needs them, he doesn't show it, ever. Colmes is The General, compared to Hannity the Grunt GI who actually enjoys sticking his leg out of foxholes. He uses his "family man" status to bolster his image as a True Patriot. He is proud that he has no education. Colmes is relaxed -- at ease with the rightest of the right, and the leftest of the left. He is charming and urbane - as opposed to the often-sociopathic Hannity. Hannity uses sexuality -- in the most homosexually macho sense -- to make a ridiculous (most often) point. He shouts down the opposition when he is losing an argument, and shows his anger and adolescence like a man who should never play poker. Colmes wouldn't even think of shouting down a guest, even a full-fledged Nazi -- and several have appeared at the request of Hannity. The two make an interesting pair -- but Ailes, if he has even one judicious bone in his programming body, should give them each their own hour. The difference between the two is simply too remarkable, and so neither is able to demonstrate their talents fully -- Hannity as a twister of facts, and Colmes as an examiner of spin.

Paula Zahn seems to be the big blunder in Ailes's little conundrum of deceit. Ms. Zahn has an impeccable pedigree professionally and scholastically. She is an accomplished cellist and a beautiful woman inside and out. Perhaps this is what appealed to Ailes, who one Fox News insider told me was once known as a "stick man" around Washington. Whatever the reason, Zahn -- at least for now -- is pleasant and sparkling among the drudgery of lunatics Ailes has assembled on his Salem Witch Trial Network.

The only problem is that Ailes is wasting Zahn, who focuses on stories like Chandra Levy and does puff pieces for aging Washington insiders -- the latest being one focusing on Henry Kissinger, who has written yet another tome sure to bore us all to death and sure to gather dust in our libraries, forever unread. She's even featuring some more claptrap about Princes Diana this week. Please, Roger -- use this woman in place of some of your less talented non-talent. She deserves it, she's earned it -- and she's certainly easier on the eyes than Bill O'Reilly.

Sella says that Fox gave the world "Cops" -- but actually a political media guru named Jeff Koopersmith invented the Cops format in L.A. for a client, the LAPD.

Sella also labels the misleading and often just plain asinine tabloid headlines that pock Fox television all the time "nothing unusual"

Sella too quickly writes off what he sees himself as irresponsible, bloody competition from Fox News Channel, and apologizes for it by telling us that Fox insists that the "dignity" of their news is "uncorroded" (another non-word).

Dignity? On Fox, or on the part of Fox network employees?

Sella must be joking. Ailes, who begins his indignities merely with his appearance, is a non-stop-cussing, tooth-picking indignity himself - not to mention the minions who ape him.

One of Sella's best quotes -- and I think John Moody, Ailes's clone didn't realize it when he fed it -- is: "One must make sure the news isn't drowned out in an audience laugh track. But I know very few lovers of good food who like to be force-fed."

First of all, huh?

Second, all the so-called news on Fox is submerged under a continual laugh track from its audience. Only in Fargo do women in curlers sit in their La-zee Boys, mouths gaping at the "news" Fox force feeds them every day.

Sella thinks, hilariously, that Fox News evolved from the over-indulgence in entertainment that Fox was, and is still, known for.

He speaks of Fox's "senior" White House correspondent -- Jim Angle -- as "mindful" of his need to be diverting. Or is that diversionary? Angle won an award recently from the White House Correspondents' Association for his coverage of the Florida recount. I was at that ceremony -- and I cringed when he got it, along with most of the people in attendance. Now don't get me wrong. Angle is one of the most affable and not-in-love-with-himself reporters lurking on Pennsylvania Avenue. But his coverage of Florida was tentative at best and misleading at worst. However, he did better than most others -- including CNN.

One thing's for sure: Angle knows who pays for his wheels.

Ailes evidently told Sella that it has always been his dream to reinvent the television screen. This is, in a sense, a lie.

What Ailes, led by others, is doing at Fox is the same thing that networks and cable stations are doing to all viewers watching any station as I write. They are preparing you for non-stop advertisements -- not only about their next disappointing show, but also from sponsors from Kellogg's to FedEx who plan to run never-ending ads on the bottom and sides of your screen in a bastardization of the normal Internet screen. So greedy are these people that, of course, they will force viewers to retreat from "free" television altogether -- much as what I am already seeing with the numbers on post-prime CNBC and MSNBC shows which are already doing this to a larger extent than Fox.

As companies like Underwriters Digital Research and other pay-per-view broadband Internet broadcasters begin to offer the news in a truly fair and balanced manner and favorite television shows free of commercials -- for a small fee -- the foolish plans of Ailes will be relegated to the dustbin of television history.

People at Fox, like Dick O'Brian, its creative director, think that "Fox looks great in comparison to the vanilla ice cream look of CNN."

Has Sella spent any time watching Fox News? It's a nightmare with the look of a stereotypical bad acid trip: garish, floating colors, gaudy frames around serious people, and music that sounds like low-rent Van Halen. Sella describes this as brisk, brightly colored; shiny textures continually float(ing) around in the background. "Nothing is static, nothing is haughty."

One supposes that Sella thinks good taste and good design training makes graphics "haughty." One also supposes that Sella has done his share of mind-altering substances. Fox graphics, like its content, are designed primarily to attract druggies and grass-dumbed Americans now drowned in suds and corn chips.

The most disturbing attribute of Sella's article in the Times Magazine is that last year he wrote -- and the Times published -- another "theoretical" piece filled with mumbo-jumbo that was highly criticized by nearly everyone in the media. His piece, which was a joke-of-a-rap-on-the-knuckles of late night comedians, claimed that Americans get their political news from the likes of Jay Leno and Dave Letterman, or -- get this -- from programs like the hilarious Daily Show once hosted by Craig Kilbourn - who is now a late-nighter as well.

Of course, except for the clown Ben Wattenberg (another Looney Toon who pretends to be an intellectual), most of us simply laughed at this prior Sella thesis -- which, in fact, called for a ban on political jokes by these late night impresarios. The Times again put this story on its cover -- titling it "The Stiff Guy vs. the Dumb Guy," a not-so-obtuse reference to Al Gore and Little George. Sella claimed that Leno and Letterman were "unfair" because, he claimed, millions of us get our news from comics.

Is this guy out of his mind? Or is he just pulling our legs -- or humping the legs of the GOP elite?

Sella also accused Letterman, and others, of shirking their "responsibility." Letterman, with twice the smarts of Sella, slapped him down quickly by referring to Sella as "that little punk."

Count on Jonah "The Moron" Goldberg, son of the chief Clinton pseudo-scandal instigator and co-conspirator with Newsweek and that opportunist Linda Tripp, to hang the Clintons. Goldberg, who wrote about Sella's first piece fondly (as one would predict), was the only person with a typewriter who did so. Goldberg, who has the IQ of an English Muffin, wrote that Americans who get their news from "The Daily Show" do not deserve to vote -- and neither do Minnesotans who vote for wrestlers as governor, nor anyone else that doesn't takes Jonah's and him mommy's Neo-Nazi friends and theories seriously and adopt them post haste.

Jonah Goldberg's sticking up for Sella is the best example I can think of when considering whether Sella has simply penned a 20-page unpaid advertisement for Ailes, Fox and Murdoch knowingly -- or just did so because he and his editors are idiots.

I can't make that choice -- it's up to you.

Which brings me back to the Empty Sella Syndrome -- an idiopathic disease of the brain.

Sella talks about the circus Fox created over the McVeigh execution, assassination or murder -- depending on one's point of view -- and mentioned that Fox opened every McVeigh-related story with a short on the horrible aftermath of this psychotic's political revolutionary -- or just plain white-power hate-filled -- bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Not that I disagree that people did need to be reminded of McVeigh's heinous crime -- perhaps the morons that Fox caters to had truly forgotten, from alcoholism or some other brain dysfunction. But what Sella and Fox -- really Ailes -- do not understand is that there is a time and place for everything, and this is what largely dictates taste -- or the lack thereof.

While most Americans quietly nodded their assent that McVeigh deserved to die for the bombing, particularly for killing infants and young children in the building's day care center, Fox engaged in non-stop sideshow of bloody photos, photos of someone's child -- not to make a political statement that McVeigh should die, but to titillate the sick and undereducated people who watch Fox as a general rule. Yes, Ailes know his audience well. They are similar to the mobs that crowded the Coliseum at Rome to watch gladiators torture, be tortured, and get killed.

Sella calls the promo for the Fox viewpoint underscoring the governmental right to kill as in "accord with the network's distaste for prisoner sympathy -- a blunt reminder of how McVeigh got to Terre Haute. It was a kick in the gut. Amid smoke and a pounding beat, we saw highly charged language from the story: first, 'Collateral Damage.' Then the giant red word 'Children' receded slightly to the point where the full phrase came clear: '16 Children.' The biggest word so far took control: 'DEATH' [yeah -- in case we missed the body count a fraction of a second ago]. Then 'No Remorse' and '168 Dead.' There was an ominous, slow-motion replay of McVeigh's 'perpwalk' intercut with victims in agony.'

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is Fehrundbalinst news at it finest, run by the finest mind in television -- Roger Ailes.

Sella calls the reality of Fox News' obvious Neofascist bias a "perception" and, with that one word, attempts to erase all the truth written about this sleaze cable network trying to take a piece of the $10 billion cable advertising market for its own.

He claims that Fox "simplifies, clarifies political stories, and boils them down to their most 'accessible' three word description." Of course, complex political and policy stories are not able to be "boiled down" to three word headlines, nor are they to be explained by the airheads who populate the Fox News Channel in the early morning. But propaganda can be and is always boiled down to a few-word slogan or headline -- and Ailes, whom everyone including me agrees is a masterful sloganeer, is a connoisseur of the one-liner.

Naturally, Sella goes on to explain away Bill O'Reilly's ignorance -- both as a so-called populist but really just as another incarnation of a Hollywood gossip-monger -- a role he played so well as co-host of "Inside Edition."

Again Sella mentions that O'Reilly's own hate-filled and totally inept book, with no factual basis at all, is also a Times Best Seller. One wonders whether the Times is now putting any book by any idiot right winger that gets phonied-up bulk sales on its best seller list in anticipation of the "usual suspects" buying up all the copies and sending them as gifts to GOP contributors as they did with bitter, jealous Peggy Noonan's hateful diatribe against Hillary Clinton.

Sella seems to have absolutely no studied or intimate knowledge of O'Reilly's show - which, according to friends in the cable industry, is known in the business not as "The Factor" but as "The Sphincter." He points out that O'Reilly thinks that if Al Gore had been insane enough to appear on his show, that he would be President of the United States today.

One doubles over with laughter at this suggestion.

Where is Sella's mind, his critical mind? Does he simply write what people tell him as truth?

Sella is to be sort of congratulated on his revelations concerning the latest Hitlerian offering by Ailes -- "Only on Fox" -- a show dedicated to insulting the intelligence of even the slowest couch potato corn farmer. He mocks the show without mocking it -- listing features such as Montana loggers' protests against federal restrictions that included a complaint that "the Clinton-Gore years waged war on rural America" and a long feature profiling a boy who sued his high school after his "Straight Pride" T-shirt was banned.

Gays and lesbians, the little punk insisted, had "safe zones" in the school. "I don't have a Christian safe zone," he said, clearly in some sort of jeopardy. "I don't have a straight zone. There's nothing for me."

Sheesh.

Sella sometimes writes a clear sentence. "Still, the intent of 'Only on Fox' could only be to stoke the conservative fires. It's a sustained taunt to fed-up Republicans. Yet the show's sign-off - 'That's your news, fair and balanced' -- suggests that it's not an opinion show. It's no wonder that some viewers have trouble discerning Opinion Fox from the Straight News Fox that is the pride of Hume and Moody."

That was the toughest criticism of Ailes's little party -- and frankly, as criticism, it's a disappointment.

But here again, Sella trips over his own admiration for industrialized propaganda machines. While he chides Fox for misleading its own audience of vampiric liberal-haters, he calls the Hume-Moody brand of Fox News -- "straight," and the "pride" of them both.

The fact is that the entire Fox News Channel effort is one big sustained taunt -- not to fed-up Republicans, but to fed up morons who, like the German lumpen of the early 1930s, placed hope in the Hitler and his Nazis, think that the New Republicans will make them rich, crime-free, divorce-free, abortion-free and not as stupid as they are... someday.

Of course, that's what the Republican leadership wants them to think -- just as the American robber barons of yore told us: go to church, work hard (for me), save your money, work harder, give up on any luxuries and comforts -- then you'll be wealthy and achieve the American dream.

And now, just as then, it's a pile of crap.

Sella moves to Hume, and a meeting with him in his office -- strategically positioned in front of the Capitol Dome so that the reader is sure to think that Hume rises above all that garbage spread out in New York.

Sella plays Henry James, and describes Hume's office in detail -- the nine television screens across from the Hume desk where he can mock other journalists, the fact that Hume never removes his jacket -- even in his own office, most likely because Ronald Reagan never did (well that's predictable -- Hume is the kind of guy who probably wore a condom to gym class). Sella notices Hume's white suspenders with big blue stars on them. Of course, Hume has what we call -- "An Ego Wall" -- filled with pictures demonstrating his own self-importance -- to him: various presidents, celebrities, the usual suspects. When men wear their initials on their shirtsleeves or on their pockets or walls, they demonstrate how juvenile egos can be -- initials are traditionally laundry marks that should be sewn into shirttails, not on display on your shirts. Likewise, the moment one sees a wall like Brit Hume's Ego Wall, one should make an immediate mental note that the man who owns it is a self-important ass.

Again Sella is sitting in on the 3:30 wrap meeting between Ailes and his Gestapo chiefs. Mild-mannered Moody brings up a "cultural piece" -- about a "...study that suggests gay people can choose to turn around their sexuality."

Ailes asks if the study is "legitimate" -- meaning that he knows it probably is not, but wants to know if is had the RNC imprimatur attached. Moody replies that it is. Ailes makes a crude joke about showing pictures of Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas's wife, to gay men and "turnin' 'em around." Moody defers to the study -- as "lengthy."

Hume, Sella writes, is all the while fiddling with his e-mail. Sella mentions no remarks by Hume on the "Cure a Fag" story that Moody and Ailes are chatting about, and again, his lack of study, his total disrespect for his readers, becomes apparent in Sella's work.

Does Sella know that Hume's wonderful and dearly loved son Sandy -- himself a Washington reporter -- was gay and very much alive and well before he killed himself recently over a lost love and an arrest for drunkenness?

Does Sella know that even the stony Hume might well have a soul -- and may think about those idiots at a Virginia jail who, after Sandy's attempted suicide in his cell by hanging himself with his shoelaces, sent him home only to blow his head off with a shotgun?

Does Sella know about the twisted rumors about Sandy Hume and a notable GOP congressman also rumored to be gay although married -- a rumor that is most likely a falsehood spread by the seamier side of the left wing, or by the sick, gay-bashing wing of the right?

No.

Thus Sella fails to see the human side of human -- if there is one -- and reports the idiotic conversation between Moody and Ailes as if it occurred in a vacuum. He does not know his subject, and there is no excuse for that.

What the exchange between Moody and Ailes also proves is how treacherous Ailes is capable of being. Naturally he knows about Sandy Hume, and knows all the dirt surrounding the much-too-early death of the young man who was beginning to show real talent as a correspondent for Fox News. Yet he and Moody banter about a cure -- a phony cure for homosexuality -- that were it true might have "saved" Sandy, Brit and his wife from what must have been a living hell. Ailes is a real man.

Hume claims not be a natural Republican -- yet he is, at least, the titular head of Fox News, and his wife runs a big portion of its Washington operations.

But Hume bristles at a colleague who "Sieg Heiled" the W. at a college campaign stop last year -- "telegraphing the disgracefulness of the remark."

Disgraceful? I'd say perfectly appropriate for Bush, and every male in his family, including Prescott "Big Bucks for the Bundesreich" Bush.

It seems that Hume has little knowledge of history -- especially Bush history.

Hume tells Sella that he has "ideas" -- mysterious ones -- about how to cleanse bias from news. He doesn't want to share them with Sella because he thinks only he can make it happen and doesn't want to lay out his blueprint for competitors to copy. Hmm… time for a little electroshock, Brit?

Hume hints, according to Sella, that selecting the proper story may be one key -- and taking the "low hanging fruit" (stories that no one else would see fit to publish) might be the answer.

Come on. Does Hume think this sick strategy will apply only to Democrats? As with the rest of the non-political world, the worst bestiality and abuse occurs in the best Republican neighborhoods -- as we all learned when the facts about super-adulterer Henry Hyde came to the fore in 1999.

Hume, Ailes and Moody make no bones -- although they should -- about their eagerness to cover religion -- without, they say, the ridicule they sense from competitive news organizations.

Really? I heard no fewer that three sarcastic comments on the Black holiday Kwanzaa from the mouths of Fox talking heads during December.

Is Hume too playing the Big Lie game as Goebbels practiced it?

Feebly, in trying to make his point on religion, Hume made sure to defer to Bush's wild (and way too new-found for me) religious enthusiasm in a one-on-one interview with the former Texas governor in April. On the promotion spot for this "intimate" chat with the new president -- Hume said, "if we want to understand this president, we have to understand his daily faith." And referred to former President George Bush as the current president's "earthly father."

God, help us.

Finally, Sella seems to get down to business. Was all this fluff about Ailes and Fox News just a witty way to destroy the Fat Man?

Sella posits: "...has Fox News Channel done it? Has Roger Ailes built that haven, the wonderland of neutrality to which he and Moody and Hume so vocally aspire?"

In a word, he answers:

"No."

Thank you for small favors.

Yet he then goes on in an uninspiring and designed-to-please-Ailes format, first saying that Fox can still be counted on to "lean to the right" and CNN to "lean to the left." Nothing could be more preposterous. CNN, if it does not already, will never be leaning to the left again once Steve Case and the Time Warner chiefs get some modicum of control.

And Fox doesn't LEAN to the right -- it BASKS in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate.

Sella goes further, stating that Fox may be "at least a haven for conservatism" but injects before that understatement that Fox News Channel might be at most such a haven. In fact, Fox News Channel is as pure a breeding ground for Neofascist pseudo-journalism as any ever witnessed -- and one that has already infected some of America's most reliable news outlets.

I must say I was stunned to read that Howard Kurtz defended Fox to Sella. He reportedly told Sella, "I think by and large that Fox's daily news, as opposed to their nighttime shouting-heads programming, is reasonably straight and balanced. It's undoubtedly true that some aggressively conservative voices are heard in ways you don't see on other cable networks, but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing."

Well, of course not! We know who signs your checks, Howie, and we understand.

Could it be that having John Ellis -- a cousin of the President -- calling the election for Fox was an Ailes misstep?

Could it be that Fox's lone stance defending that witch Catherine Harris, who lied straight-faced to the people of Florida for weeks on end, was a blooper?

Yes, Mr. Sella -- it very could be.

No one in their right mind, even today, believes that Bush won Florida, and perhaps Tennessee, in a fair an open contest. Not one thinker, not one evenhanded journalist -- not one historian worth his salt -- believes that Bush legitimately sits in the White House at the invitation and by the consent of the American people.

Hume, to give you a clue as to whether there is actually blood in his veins, told Sella that "the (Harris) certification was a ministerial act, not a decree. Bias leaked over to the point where the story wasn't true. You'd think that with such a prominent journalist [he was referring to Dan Rather], so utterly misrepresenting a story, some rebuke would be in order."

Well, well - seems Brit is a little jealous of Mr. Rather, doesn't it.

A rebuke? Sure, Brit -- then what's your punishment for humiliating young Chelsea Clinton by repeating over and over her father's alleged adultery in detail with the smugness that only a loser like you can muster?

Sella continues to wax eloquent on the "subtle" differences between CNN and Fox. However, to anyone's eye -- trained or not -- Fox's differences with CNN are striking, not subtle. Fox's differences with any large news organization are staggering -- except perhaps in comparison to Entertainment Tonight.

Sella stealthily claims that CNN, because it began a story on Bush's energy policy with Tom Daschle instead of Bush himself (the origin of the story, according to Sella), proves CNN's left-handedness. How, then, does Sella explain that every journalist from here to Istanbul was stunned at the arrogance of this Bush "We need oil, and we don't give a damn what we do, what we destroy, what we kill or who we kill to get it" policy?

Sella instead lauds Fox for setting up its piece on the Bush Energy scam by quoting Bush. Fox hardly quoted the overwhelming criticism of this idiotic policy by half of the population of earth, and instead had its three-person AM goon squad follow the Hume "Special Report" party line the next morning, making jokes about the Alaskan wildlife preserve.

Hume followed up on the original report calling conservationist's claims -- including those of Republican leaders -- "melodramatic"

Sella sits in another meeting with the Fox Gestapo -- this time after Bush announced his outlandish missile-defense-plan -- so obviously a payoff to the engineering and aerospace lobby that stuffed his campaign coffers full of cash in advance.

But this time, Moody seems concerned that President Putin of Russia is upset by this plan -- even though Putin knows it can't work. Neither Moody, nor Ailes (nor Sella) seems to know that when Bush got the GOP nomination, half the State Department had to fly to Russia to calm Putin and his generals.

Ailes says something about this being a dangerous situation, and Hume makes fun of Bush because, even after Hume tutored the President on how to say nuclear instead of nuc-cu-lar -- Bush simply turned to him and said "Right -- its nu-cu-lar."

The team moves to the budget and then quickly to Jenna Bush's injudicious "arrest" for drinking in a bar at 19. Ailes offers that he was "hammered" at all times between the age of 17 and 25. Word is that he's still hammered -- but not by alcohol -- although the truth may be far from it.

Hume, after making a snide remark about other people's views that Bush is reneging on the moderate postures he adopted before he was elected, is simply ignored by the others in the room. Could it be, that Hume too, might be in the crosshairs of Murdoch and Ailes because he sometimes can't stomach the very team he leads, and Ailes knows it?

You betcha.

Sella's "lecture" on the future of news media is largely boring, uninformative, fraught with confusion, and comes to no identifiable conclusion -- as is his style, regrettably.

He wonders whether news organizations will one day "take up sides" and choose left, right, or center. Well, gee Mr. Sella, I thought the media was doing a fairly good job of not choosing sides too much -- until Ailes rotund mind and body entered the hall on Avenue of the Americans and began to push his Neo-Nazi trash.

To my horror, Sella then writes that perhaps "it wouldn't be so bad" for news people to take sides. He claims this works well in Britain. He is, of course, wrong. He thinks that Rupert Murdoch "seems" open to the idea.

Seems open?

Come on, Sella -- you really must be joking. Do you actually believe that Murdoch stands for anything but the lowest form of journalistic squalor? Sella even defends the possibility that Murdoch "may" choose up sides -- because it's only for money -- or "competition," as Sella puts it. He claims to have "stopped by" to see Murdoch recently to get his opinion on openly biased news.

One doesn't "stop by" to see Rupert Murdoch.

Like all billionaires, Murdoch treated Sella "like a sick friend." This is a long-practiced tactic among the wealthy to disarm even their most potentially violent or destructive critics. Sella was impressed enough to write about it.

Murdoch told him that maybe, someday, Fox would actually have news bureaus to actually report the news, and not simply grab it from the wire services and then twist it into another right wing triumph.

By then, I imagine, Murdoch's heirs will be able to twist even the originator of the story their way.

The truth of the matter, Murdoch told Sella, was that Fox News was not conservative enough. "There is a huge level of liberal propaganda on Fox News," he said, a bit exasperated. "But it certainly is balanced on the other side!"

Good old Rupert!

And you know -- he's correct. Fox isn't far right enough to live up to maniacal treatises like "The Prince" or "Mein Kampf" or "Atlas Shrugged."

No, Fox News does have a way to go.

And if I have anything to say at all about it, it will never make it.

Copyright © 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, American Politics Journal Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. Read our privacy policy. Contact us.
ISSN No. 1523-1690