Roger Ailes is Dead

I was wondering why the air smelled better this morning. Then I found out that Roger Ailes had died which solved the mystery.

Ailes was an evil man. He wasn't on the scale of a Hitler or a Stalin perhaps but the damage he's done with the innuendo laced, accurate but misleading and outright lying format that still dominates Fox News probably won't be repaired for decades and may never be repaired.

Fox News is not a news station. It's a Right Wing propaganda outlet and needs to be viewed that way.

Allow me to provide a recent example and explain exactly what Fox is doing.

In Mid-March two young men in Maryland, 17 and 18 years old, were accused of raping a 14 year-old female classmate in a bathroom stall at their high school.

One of those young men was an undocumented immigrant.

That was all it took, simply an accusation, for Fox News, in the person of Tucker Carlson,  to go all beast mode on illegal immigration. Carlson claimed that city officials “don’t want to think about the connection illegal immigration might have to this crime or others like it.”

Carlson's conclusion about the case was “This is insanity, of course, a sign of a sick civilization at war with itself. A strong country enforces its laws and protects its citizens. That’s Job One. In the U.S., too often we ignore our own laws and allow ruin to be visited on our own people.”

Now, notice two things, first he is assuming the boys are guilty even though he interviewed their lawyer who told him the sex was consensual. Carlson's response was to badger the attorney saying “You’d better be right about this because if you’re going to be impugning the character of a 14-year-old girl who says she was raped — other people said they heard her screams.”

Second, notice that he is introducing things that may or may not be true as facts. (1) Illegal immigration has a significant connection to crime. (2) City officials don't want to think about that. (3) People heard the girl scream. (4) In the US we ignore our own laws. (5) You're in danger because these things allow "ruin to be visited on our own people."

All of these things are asserted as facts with no justification, no evidence and no dissenting opinion. A lot of people are going to walk away from this barrage believing all of this crap.

Meanwhile, back in Maryland, the charges against the two boys were dropped because as the county prosecutor put it, “The facts of this case do not support the original charges filed."

Now Fox News wasn't the only Right Wing outlet jumping to conclusions but they were probably heard by the most people and did the most damage.

So, they're going to issue a retraction right? ****crickets****