Comments

  1. whywhywhy says

    similar to being hungry makes food taste better, having 45 as pres makes conservative tears more satisfying

  2. StonedRanger says

    Ed @#2
    Just out of curiosity, how is letting the guy live 77 years being a piece of shit, being beneficent (to anyone other than Ailes)?

  3. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    What is best in life?

    Me? I love a good reference.

    Conservative tears make great tea-water, of course, but tis the references that really glister my goat. Or gold. Or something.

  4. thirdmill says

    When someone like Roger Ailes dies, one almost wishes hell actually existed.

  5. brett says

    I don’t know, PZ, the Deadspin obituary is a pretty good contender as well:

    The only thing that needs to be written about Roger Ailes for all the rest of eternity is that he was as vile an abomination as has ever slipped from a human orifice, that the success and power he attained in life are as damning an indictment as you can read against the fiber of American society, and that the entire world is worse off for him ever having lived in it. Everything he was and did was awful and worthless. Bury him under an outhouse.

  6. Ed Seedhouse says

    StonedRanger@4 “Ed @#2
    Just out of curiosity, how is letting the guy live 77 years being a piece of shit, being beneficent (to anyone other than Ailes)?”

    Time to get your irony meter repaired…PZ was celebrating his death, not his life. He died, that’s good.

    And I was satirizing an ancient Christian argument for the existence of God. Well, attempting to…

  7. Ed Seedhouse says

    brett@7 (quoting Deadspin) “Bury him under an outhouse.”

    Why defile an honest outhouse? It’s just doing it’s job, what has it done to deserve that?

  8. Jessie Harban says

    I don’t get why people are celebrating the death of Roger Ailes. He lived to 77, he died of natural causes, and he was rich— his death just means it’s too late to hold him accountable.

    Worse, that means he’ll be remembered by history as a good man whose actions were rewarded by society, and teach countless generations that ruining the lives of billions of people is something that earns you wealth and power.

  9. says

    Surely Chaffetz is only resigning Congress so that he can be appointed to a senior administration position. Which would be the scariest vacancy he could fill?

  10. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @tigtog, #11:

    it has been reported that Fox news has offered him a paid gig, because of course they did. They’ve been mutually promoting each other at least since Benghazi!

  11. archangelospumoni says

    All:
    A quick public opinion question please . . . which one provided more joy–the passing of

    1. Antonin Scalia? —or—-
    2. Roger Ailes?

    3. Other (plenty exist, but trying to limit to these two for now).

  12. Jessie Harban says

    A quick public opinion question please . . . which one provided more joy–the passing of
    1. Antonin Scalia? —or—-
    2. Roger Ailes?

    Scalia, easily.

    It’s a pity we didn’t get to hold either one accountable for their actions, but at least Scalia’s death stopped him from causing further harm. With Ailes, the damage is already done.

  13. chigau (違う) says

    The women in the archetype best in life quote were not actually “lamenting”.
    It’s an easy mistake to make. For some people.

  14. KG says

    Unfortunately, Taibbi goes in for some halfwitted bothsidesery:

    Ailes trained Americans to shop for the news as a commodity. Not just on the right but across the political spectrum now, Americans have learned to view the news as a consumer product.

    What most of us are buying when we tune in to this or that channel or read this or that newspaper is a reassuring take on the changes in the world that most frighten us. We buy the version of the world that pleases us and live in little bubbles where we get to nurse resentments all day long and no one ever tells us we’re wrong about anything.

    He mentions MSNBC as Fox’s equivalent on the left. MSNBC, which has just hired George Will.

  15. KG says

    Further to my #17, what is wrong with Fox, Breitbart etc. is not that they take a partisan stance: it’s that they shamelessly, routinely, lie about matters of verifiable fact. Do any leftist media outlets of comparable prominence (assuming such to exist in the USA) do that?

  16. lotharloo says

    I’m also calling bullshit on the Aile’s supposed “genius” that everyone seems to be spout just because the asshole dropped dead. The mainstream fuckers have a tendency to mistake “absolute lack of morality” for “genius”. Is it “genius” to lie, trick, and manipulate people? Is it genius to figure out that people are lazy and that they can be manipulated by constant propaganda and then exploit this to the utmost degree? Was Goebbels a fucking genius too then?

  17. mattand says

    KG @17 wrote:

    He mentions MSNBC as Fox’s equivalent on the left. MSNBC, which has just hired George Will.

    Other notable MSNBC hires:

    Joe Scarborough
    Greta Van Susteren
    Nicole Wallace (former PR flak for W)
    Hugh Hewitt, most likely

    Look at that list and show me three or four on-air equivalents at Fox. Maybe Shep Smith, but I still maintain he’s scripted to be their loose cannon whose “independent” streak allows him to go off-narrative.

    I am. So. Fucking. Tired. Of people insisting that MSNBC is the flip side of Fox. Why? Because it isn’t fucking true. It’s cover for people who don’t want to actually critically look at the two networks, because it throws off the whole Magic Balance Fairy religion that Americans cling to when it comes to political discourse.

    Speaking of irritating both siderism: Jerry Coyne was, in my opinion, wringing his hands in his latest post that liberals were too happy over Ailes’ death. Bullshit. The man spent his life playing up to every ignorant paranoid fantasy conservatives harbor and became a kajillionaire while doing it. But I’m supposed to maintain a respectful tone because he’s dead.

    Fuck that. It’s particularly irritating since Coyne carves out an exception for Hitchens shitting all over Jerry Falwell’s corpse. Especially since you can make a strong argument that Ailes did far, far more damage to this country with his propaganda machine than Falwell ever did.

  18. lotharloo says

    Jerry Coyne is a dumbass man-child with fragile feelings. I really tried hard to like his blogs, he posts interesting sciencey posts, I like his taste in movies, and I am 100% a total cat freak. I kept reading his blog even after he banned me for silly reasons, twice. But eventually, I could not take the stupidity anymore.

  19. mattand says

    @23 lotharloo:

    I posted a response on his blog, which was basically what I wrote in #22.

    LOL, keep your shocked face under control, but it didn’t get approved.

  20. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    But I’m supposed to maintain a respectful tone because he’s dead.

    Yeah, the whole point about not speaking ill of the dead is not to hurt the feelings of loved ones in mourning. So if you’re talking to Ailes’s wife it’s generally not good form to say, “Hey, sorry for your loss, but you know your husband was a lying, bigoted, misogynistic dingleberry who would rot in hell if such a place existed, so really, no great loss at all” (even if she says it first).

    But I seriously doubt any of Ailes’s loved ones reads this blog or Coyne’s.

  21. lotharloo says

    @mattand:
    Hahahaha, can’t have dissent on Crusader for Freedom of Speech’s blog, can we?