Michelle Moquin's "A day in the life of…"

Good morning!

I HOPE everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend.

I was asking the same question myself. You?

From the Huff Po:

Hey Does Anyone Find Roger Ailes’ Recent Career Trajectory Puzzling, Or Is It Just Me?

I don’t know if anyone noticed, but he went from being ousted at Fox News under scandal to advising a presidential campaign.

Over at Daily Intelligencer, Gabriel Sherman has a fresh account of the banishment of Roger Ailes from the Fox News Channel, focused mainly on the women at Fox who meticulously built their case against the infamous network head in response to years of sexual harassment. You can revisit many of the gory details of the case: the snide sexist comments, the way Ailes treated his female talent as objects for his on-demand titillations, and the retreat to intimidation whenever one of Ailes’ victims dared to stand up to him. All in all, it paints the picture of an ouster that was justly deserved.

Here’s an interesting side detail to this whole story, though. Ailes went from being forced out at Fox News under a grotesque, career-ending scandal to ― hey, let me double-check this … oh, yeah, here we go ― advising a presidential campaign.

That’s like … fffffucked up, man! I think that maybe more people should talk about this?

Of course, many people have noted that Ailes has ended up in the advisory orbit of GOP presidential candidate and sewage-poisoned log flume Donald Trump. One can’t help but notice this because, of late, the Trump campaign has seemingly made a mission of collecting many of the right wing’s more diabolical characters, “Pokemon Go”-style.

Trump traded up friend-to-dictators Paul Manafort for the dick-to-his-friends Steve Bannon, who apparently nurtured a rancid corporate culture of his own over at Breitbart News. More recently, Trump added Citizens United hatchet-man David Bossie to his camp as deputy campaign manager. They join ranks that include famed “dirty trickster” Roger Stone, trench-mouthed adviser Carl Paladino, and the perpetually hanging on hanger-on Corey Lewandowski, whose relationship to the campaign ― maybe he’s in, maybe he’s not ― seems to depend on the wind direction. (Recent acquisition Kellyanne Conway is the seasoned professional who’s been tasked with extracting a functioning, professional campaign from this rogues’ gallery ― that is, if she has any time left between all the occasions Ailes asks her to “give him a little twirl.”)

So, yeah, maybe it’s easy to lose a Roger Ailes in that sketchy wilderness, but one would think that the fact that Ailes got tossed from the news network he led to prominence after it came to light that he’d been routinely terrorizing his female employees might make it just a little bit harder. (Harder still, when you factor in the allegations he was using shareholder money for what amounted to prostitution, the “black box” espionage operation he set up within Fox, and the massive settlements he paid out to keep all of this quiet.)

Strangely however, the fact that Ailes’ workplace scandal ― the very thing that made it possible for him to advise the Trump campaign in a formal capacity in the first place ― doesn’t seem to come up all that often, and when it does, it never comes with any sort of accompanying comment noting that it’s really, really messed up that the guy went from his specific sort of tawdry downfall to the inner circle of a presidential campaign, or that this is the sort of hire that most presidential campaigns try to not make at this stage of the game.

The New York Times, in its initial report on Ailes’ involvement with the campaign, very quickly notes that Ailes was “ousted … over charges of sexual harassment.” But the same piece moves quickly to suggest that for Ailes, “being connected with Mr. Trump’s campaign could be a form of redemption after he was pushed out of the powerful network that he helped build.” Leaving aside the fact that the Trump campaign seems to the planet’s least likely repository of spiritual salvation, how would this work? It would seem that Ailes’ path to “redemption” would necessarily include a raft of apologies and the making of substantial restitution to the women he abused.

“Still,” writes the Times, “Mr. Ailes’s involvement is certain to stoke controversy.” Not if you suggest that his involvement might lead to redemption it won’t!

CNN’s Brian Stelter, pointing out the strange way the Trump campaign seemed to not want to make its embrace of Ailes known ― endeavoring to distinguish Ailes as an adviser to Trump, but not to the campaign ― notes Ailes’ ouster and provides the understatement: “The distinction is significant because Ailes is a subject of controversy.” I’ll say! And attendant to that controversy is the fact that Trump actually defended Ailes during the swirling scandal. “I can tell you that some of the women that are complaining,” said Trump, “I know how much he’s helped them.” Sure, sure.

“It makes a certain sense,” writes The Atlantic’s David Graham, “that ― as The New York Times reports ― Roger Ailes, the recently ousted Fox News chief, is advising Donald Trump ahead of the presidential debates.”

But, does it??

“Whatever his failings,” Graham writes, “Ailes knows his way around TV and salesmanship.”

I mean, the whole fact that he made a practice of sexually harassing his on-air talent maybe suggests that these skills aren’t as amazing a commodity to a campaign as one might have previously imagined. Moreover, I’m having a really difficult time picturing a conversation between Ailes and Trump in which Trump accepts the premise that Ailes knows more about how to perform on television than the candidate does.

By far the oddest story on the Ailes-Trump team-up comes from The Washington Post’s Callum Borchers, in a piece titled, “Why Donald Trump and Roger Ailes are so cagey about their relationship.” Based on that headline, you’d think that this explanation would be very quickly and capably rendered, because of the rather obvious reason they’d need to be so cagey.

Per Borchers:

Now, CBS News reports that Ailes participated in a debate prep session Sunday. If the TV titan is assisting Trump, why so cagey? Why wouldn’t the two men just say they are working together?

A few explanations come to mind.

Well, there’s the one explanation ― the one! ― that comes to mind, sits there in the mind, pecks at the mind, demanding attention from the mind, that will only finally get on up out of your mind and leave you alone when you acknowledge it. What are these “few explanations?”

1. “These are media-savvy men who understand that restricting information keeps the press interested.”
2. “Another possible reason is that denying basic, factual truths is just a thing Trump does. It doesn’t even have to be bad stuff, necessarily. He just seems to get a kick out of telling journalists that their accurate reporting is actually wrong.”
3. “It’s also worth considering the possibility that Ailes is the one who wants to keep his work for Trump — however informal — on the down-low … On the other hand, Ailes’s jumping aboard the Trump Train could tarnish the accolades he and Fox News received early in the GOP primary for tough coverage.”

Callum! Bruh! Don’t overthink this! They are being “cagey” because Roger Ailes watched his career go up in flames after he sexually harassed a bunch of his employees and then Trump turned around and gave this scoundrel a safe harbor.

“At first glance, it seems silly for Trump and Ailes to be so secretive,” writes Borchers, “But the closer you look, the more it makes sense.”

Okay, in the first place, this piece actually fails to make sense of it. But more importantly, the whole arrangement is what looks, at best, “silly.”

Right now, the Trump campaign should be working to make inroads with women voters. Ailes’ presence on the campaign makes that harder. Right now, the Trump campaign wants to keep attention away from his own sketchy workplace behavior. Ailes presence on the campaign makes that harder. The Trump campaign may want to make more hay out of Bill Clinton’s various sexual pecadillos ― something Trump has been signaling all year that he’s prepared to do. Ailes’ presence on the campaign … well, I’m sure I don’t need to underscore this.

There’s really only one way in which Ailes joining the Trump campaign can possibly make good sense, and that is if what we know as “the Trump campaign” is now in transition from a legitimate presidential candidacy to ― which is perhaps the most credible theory of what Trump is up to. In that context, joining forces with the ousted Ailes makes sense. The two men might very well be able to construct some new media venture on the backs of their combined talent and the teeming fanbase that Trump has acquired on his presidential run. (”Roger Ailes presents the Trump News Network: the global leader in Title IX complaints!”)

Let us reiterate, for the record: Roger Ailes, a man who was forced from his job running the world’s most successful news channel due to the fact he was a serial sexual harasser, has straightaway gone to work as an adviser to a major party’s presidential campaign.

That’s altogether bonkers, right? We can agree on that, can’t we?

It’s just probably something worth mentioning, on occasion.

[POSTSCRIPT: Serendipitously, Slate’s Michelle Goldberg had many of the same questions that I did today. Know hope!]

?!?!?!?

Readers: You know the saying that goes something like:  ”Show me who you hang with, I’ll tell you who you are?” I think that applies here. Misogynists hanging with fellow misogynists.

On another note…Happy you all loved the video of our beloved FLOTUS, shakin’ it down for a very good cause. I know it was originally posted over a month ago but I had never seen it {and if I didn’t, I assumed many others didn’t as well}, and most importantly this urgent message needed more exposure. So yeah, I was delighted to post it in the blogosphere – I feel it’s always a good time to post a write in support of my ♀ sisters around the world.♀ Thanks for all the sweet praise. ♡

Carla: Yes, I read about the situation in Brazil with the Olympics. It’s really too bad. Such a happy time for most of the athletes but not so for many who live there. Happy you are both thriving. I won’t ask.

I’m aware of the environmental destruction. But murdering of children? I couldn’t find anything when I googled. I guess they’re keeping it out of the media. Horrific…just horrific. It’s a crazy world. Good to hear from you again.

Fembot: Thanks for bringing this to light. However, you might want to check your story source before you post. It sounded a bit unbelievable so I checked it out. I believe you got snookered. Snopes.com says it is false. Don’t feel bad; it happens to the best of us. I know your intentions were good. In this crazy world, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true.

Still…I signed with Moveon.org, NOT to fight women for being prosecuted for breastfeeding, {Did you read it?} but because… Idaho is one of only two states that does not provide protection for a woman’s right to breastfeed her child anywhere she is able to be. Breastfeeding women are often discriminated against and harassed for trying to do the best thing for their children. We need to protect the rights of our mothers and babies and help support a strong breastfeeding relationship.

I think it’s super important that mothers are supported. As mothers they have a right and a duty to make sure that their babies are being fed when needed. And they should feel comfortable wherever they are, and free from being discriminated and harassed. Who can’t agree to that? Sign the petition. Thanks.

That’s it for me. Happy Tuesday!

The blog is open. Blog me. 

Peace out. 

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

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