A risky defense of Fox News and Roger Ailes
A risky defense of Fox News and Roger Ailes

The only network that is pro-Israel, waves the American flag and gives comfort to Donald Trump is being pummeled by the far left.

Much merriment as to a particular scandal. Too much, perhaps?

We know what it says in our Scriptures about taking satisfaction at another’s misfortune. It is wrong, even if it’s an adversary that is suffering.

There ought to be no joy from another’s distress, but here we are when we come to former news boss Roger Ailes and his hasty departure from Fox News for sexual misconduct, not proven but alleged. The courts, apparently, will have to figure it out; that is, what constitutes sexual harassment, or guys just being jerks. 

At the moment we only know the charges against Ailes and even against some other staff members at Fox, as clarified in a fine summary here by Lloyd Grove at The Daily Beast. First Gretchen Carlson. She sounded the alarm. Said she was let go because she refused the couch.

Or refused to take the hint. There is nothing, that I can find, about Ailes physically on the prowl; rape, in other words.

Others, like Andrea Tantaros, have followed with similar accusations, and even superstar Megyn Kelly has stepped into the fray, says she too was harassed. Kelly’s denunciation doomed Ailes. Kelly was suspiciously silent about it all for quite some time. Hers was the final shoe that dropped.

Why now, might be a question for Ms. Kelly, when, it appears, she (allegedly) endured Ailes only at the outset of her 14-year career at Fox?

Or is it that piling on is what we’re witnessing and once mudslinging begins there is no end? In some places they call it schadenfreude -- the laughter when your rival slips and breaks his neck on a banana peel. I call it an obsession on the part of the un-Fox media.

(Here’s one that came in today from The New Yorker with the headline, “The Case Against Fox News,” – today, but it could be any day, day after day.)

Speaking of the workplace, no woman should ever feel objectified and threatened. Zero tolerance for behavior that even approaches sexual intimidation.  

That’s the ideal.

Ailes turned Fox News (ironically, if you wish) into a house of female empowerment.
To single out but one dubious beef: One of Ailes’ accusers says she could not wear slacks, on air at least.

Ailes wanted legs. As I’ve got it written, “while others were anchoring dull white males, he packed the house with brainy blondes, chick power.”

So while Ailes is being charged as running the newsroom like a Playboy mansion, at the same time he elaborately changed the culture and landscape of TV news. Any number of women who took courses in journalism and broadcasting would still be job-hunting were it not for Roger Ailes,

He gave them work. He gave them fame. He gave them wealth. He gave them stardom, Kelly at the top of the heap.

Ailes turned Fox News (ironically, if you wish) into a house of female empowerment. Not so at any of the other networks.

Coincidentally, CNN has also begun hiring more women than men. Ditto along ABC, NBC and CBS.

Some thanks to Ailes, maybe?

Ailes, a broadcasting maverick and genius, discovered something curious, so curious that it escaped all the other network honchos. Men like women. To be exact, men like to look at women. Or is this forbidden to be remarked upon, according to howling feminists and Canada’s Boy Wonder Trudeau, “because it’s 2016.”

But now, chick power has turned on its creator, and it is springtime for the Left, which has hated Fox News from day one for disrupting the monopoly. Yes, The DailyBeast, and The New York Times, and The New Yorker, and New YorkMagazine – all are taking turns at taunting Fox News and Roger Ailes.

Their glee is too rampant and too transparent. For is it really all that squeaky clean in their own newsrooms?

Careful, someone may come out of your closet, too. Too much laughter over your rival’s pain can boomerang. Life is funny that way.

There may be more coming out – and not just from Fox.

As to more of those charges against Ailes, that he could be rude and crude to women – what about men?

Or are we to assume that he was always polite and courteous and avuncular to the men on his staff? My guess is otherwise,

My guess is that he was the same son of a bitch all around, because that is how it is in the newsroom, or in any workplace. The talk gets rough. 

The boss tends to be an SOB.

Plus this: if the boss dislikes you, or demotes you, or fires you, is it always because of your gender? The misogyny thing? Maybe you deserve to be disliked because of your personality, male or female, and frankly, some of those now gone, were not so good or so pleasant in the first place, on or off the air.

If I’m easy on Fox News, maybe it’s because through Ailes, it was the only network that gave it straight on Israel.

None of the other networks gave the Jewish State half a chance, and still don’t, and on being obsessive, how about the mudslinging against Trump?

It’s the same leftist compulsion being used against Ailes.

Beware. You all live in glass houses.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist: “News Anchor Sweetheart,” a novelist’s version of Fox News and Megyn Kelly. Engelhard is the author of the international bestseller “Indecent Proposal.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com