Fox News has monetized evil. Conventional wisdom holds that if Fox had existed in 1974, Richard Nixon would have served out his full term. In my lifetime (and perception), no notion has been abused quite like the assessment of guilt. As a child, I had an understanding that committing the sin made you the guilty party. Period. That changed when I became a young adult. Suddenly, guilt could only be attributed to being caught while committing the sin. In the days we live in now, however, guilt is only applied when you’ve committed the sin, gotten caught committing the sin, and don’t have an army of trolls and apologists willing to look the other way. This is where Fox media and Fox News comes in to play; as just a small example, our current President has lied in-office on-the-record a documented 15,000+ times. How many times has Fox “News” called him out on the lies? It can be counted on one hand. Because it puts no $$ in Fox coffers to call President Trump out for his sins, Fox News has enabled evil like no force the modern world has ever seen.
Not Fox, however, but its brainchild and rapemaster, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) is on trial in Bombshell, a film following three attractive blonde [read: Bombshell] Fox employees and their toxic one-sided interactions with the former Fox News head. Two of the names should be recognizable even to those who only get news from Huffpost: Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman). The third is felt-up-and-comer, Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie). I want to point out right now both the movie and I agree that none of these women deserved how they were treated by Roger Ailes or Fox News. Although in each case their politics are disgusting, abhorrent representations of white privilege, none of these women earned the sexual pressure put upon them.
Megyn Kelly is the biggest name of the bunch. Invited to moderate a 2016 Republican debate during the primaries, Megyn challenged Donald Trump on his treatment of women only to find that her challenge earned her the wrath first of Trump and then the burgeoning Trump troll hordes. And Fox News, once at odds with Trump for his boorish and narcissistic character, slowly evolved into Trump’s greatest champion. Given the choice between defending the talent and defending the political will of its viewership, Fox and specifically Roger Ailes chose to view Megyn as just another panderer of their meaningless drivel.
Worse yet, was the case of Gretchen Carlson, who after refusing to give into Ailes’ closed-door antics, was demoted to a lesser host position and then axed when daring to contradict gun rights on air. Despite the camera never finding a visual harassment of Carlson by Ailes, Gretchen is the one who initiates the suit against Ailes – but only Ailes, not Fox News – an important distinction.
Finally, the case of Kayla Pospisil takes us full-circle through the decades of Ailes’ Jabba-like behavior. Gunning for an on-air job, the ambitious starlet gets a private meeting with Roger Ailes. That’s a rookie mistake. On demand, she stands and gives a twirl –content isn’t half as important as delivery in the world of Fox News—and then obliges a lecherous request to hike up her skirt above the panty-line. This mistreatment does not end at this suggestion; luckily for us, the worst is off-camera.
So what do we make of this? Besides, of course, concluding that Roger Ailes is a piece of shit. Not unlike Donald Trump, Roger Ailes sees all relationships as transactional – “You want to be on my network? What are you willing to do to prove it?” This is not how adults function. One should be able to have a personal relationship without “getting something in return.” This seems to be a lesson lost on Ailes and Trump and several others of high power and zero integrity.
It can’t be lost on anybody that Fox News is replete with attractive leggy blondes. Has the type been promoted above others? You bet it has. Has it been promoted ahead of more qualified applicants? Just listen to Tomi Lahren for thirty seconds and you tell me. This is one of the big problems with the film – the transactions were lopsided, but compensation does exist on both sides. Bombshell chose to go after Ailes, who is an obvious villain, but stopped shy of the all-out attack Fox News itself deserves. Fox, not just Ailes but all Fox executives, have engendered the climate in which evil became transactional. Ailes has been gone for over a year now; do you see Fox embracing justice or truth or simply swallowing and regurgitating the puerile and Orwellian Trump POV?
Roger Ailes is described here as a man for whom the word, “no” simply doesn’t have meaning. He thrived and fed upon a climate in which appearance and emotional response matters more than truth. Much more. And yet the film isolates Roger as a villain without really denigrating Rupert Murdoch (Malcolm McDowell) or the network itself in more than simple philosophy. For as much as I rooted for Bombshell to stick it to Ailes and Fox, the film felt like the end of Quiz Show where Dick Goodwin laments that the target was television, not Charles Van Doren, claiming the victory both shallow and Pyrrhic. And for as much as I enjoyed Bombshell, this, too, is a shallow (and likely Pyrrhic) victory; it’s hard to do anything more than *sigh* and half-smile noting that in the wake, former Fox anchors like Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson have found no similar positions elsewhere for they were -like ALL Fox hosts- not journalists so much as propagandists. No media has engineered inequality quite like Fox. Ever. It is a shame the film didn’t drive harder like its contemporaries Vice and The Big Short.
“Democrats want to tear down your stocks”
“Hillary has ODed on Hydrox”
Are these stories fair?
You know they don’t care.
This is “news” as reported by Fox
Rated R, 108 Minutes
Director: Jay Roach
Writer: Charles Randolph
Genre: Exposé
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Women abused by Roger Ailes
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Trumpsters
