If you had any question whether Roger Ailes is the world’s greatest living asshole, his apology for yesterday’s NPR are Nazis comments will remove all doubt. He apologized to the Anti-Defamation League, not NPR, because everyone knows that saying “sorry” only works if you say it to the nearest handy Holocaust survivor and/or Jew. And here’s what he regrets:
Ailes apologized “for using ‘Nazi’ when in my now considered opinion ‘nasty, inflexible bigot’ would have worked better.”
cleek
odd. is he, like, trying to start some kind of inter-company fight with NPR ? get them to descend to his level, so he can claim they are “just as bad” ?
Rommie
Geez, he could light up the Orion Nebula with that level of projection.
Jay Schiavone
Conservative orthodoxy proscribes any expression of remorse. However, since Ailes and Foxman are perhaps the same person, the “apology” does not fall into the category of remorse so much as self-pity, which is the apex of conservative expression. The man is a pro.
Breezeblock
This part struck me:
To that, may I say, I’m so fucking glad it’s Friday, gotta get my booze on!
Dan
so much wrong here. what makes ailes think the adl is the place to make the apology? and what makes foxman think he has the right to accept the apology?
and why the fuck does everything need to be compared to the nazis?
Michael
Its stuff like this that inspires me to start making donations to Hezbollah.
Ash Can
I was wondering yesterday what kind of follow-up, if any, there’d be to this. Apologizing to Abe Fucking Foxman? That’s about the least apologetic “apology” there could be for this.
R-Jud
@cleek:
Ailes has dialed up the hyperbole to 11, but this is the kind of rhetoric we in the UK have been hearing from James “Spawn of Rupert” Murdoch about the BBC for the last two or three years.
They resent having to compete with a government-funded organization. Heck, they resent the existence of a government-funded organization. Therefore it must be undermined whenever it looks vulnerable.
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
@Breezeblock:
I was struck by the same sentence. However my question is, how can Ailes’ words be “heartfelt” since that would require him to have a heart first?
PeakVT
@cleek: get them to descend to his level, so he can claim they are “just as bad”?
He’s working the refs again, which in this case is NPR. It is the most “liberal” nationwide media organization, and essentially the only broadcaster that still provides real news on a daily basis. He’s trying to bully them into shifting (further) to the right and not point out the crazy that is about to descend on Washington. If NPR takes a he said/she said approach during the next two years, the GOP will be more likely to pick up independent votes in 2012.
Dude in Princeton
@Michael:
You’ll never fly again.
Kryptik
I’m not sure what’s more appalling, Ailes’s no-pology, or Foxman being a stupid twit and accepting it as ‘heartfelt and sincere’. Apparently, Ailes’s NPR scorched earth policy is fine and dandy, long as the word ‘Nazi’ isn’t involved. Stupid fuck.
me
@Kryptik: Foxman has the back of anyone who unconditionally defends Israel. Soros has been an Israel critic and despite his Jewishness the only reason the ADL came to his defense is because he is a Beck’s attack was so disgusting.
Noonan
In politics you don’t elevate a lesser opponent by attacking them by name. I guess this rule doesn’t apply in the political media. I have no doubt the response from Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me will be blistering.
Smurfhole
I’d like to offer my services as a person willing to accept anyone’s apology for anything. For a small fee, I will graciously accept your apology for whatever you didn’t do wrong involving that other person or entity. I’ll even emphasize the heartfelt sincerity of your apology.
I love my new job.
fucen tarmal
@Dan:
no soup for you. mass culture need a reference everyone gets,so the references they choose, get tired and beaten beyond recognition.
its lazy and diminishing, but in a culture where most people would guess that zenophobe is a musical instrument, if you want to reach that audience, as seinfeld demonstrated, its something everyone gets…
what would he have said?, ” npr is like a health insurer looking for pre-existing condition exemptions” that wouldn’t work in his world.
Captain Haddock
Interesting to see who the head of Fox news is frightened of…
Oliver
Roger really nailed it with that amended comment/apology.
cleek
@fucen tarmal:
a musical instrument!
i imagine Dr Suess critters playing something long, snakelike with a big bulge in the middle.
Hawes
And so Roger Ailes resurrects the shambling corpse of Jesse Helms and begins the inevitable attack on anything of higher culture than Bristol Palin’s spastic flailings on DWTS.
Quick, someone throw a crucifix in a beaker of urine!
MattR
@me:
Pretty much. You will notice that in Ailes’s apology he make very clear how much he supports the state of Israel because he knows to the ADL that is all the really matters.
PaulW
Why isn’t Ailes being forced to apologize to the NPR people he *did* accuse of being Nazis? Why is he apologizing to only the ADL? If the SOB insulted me, I want him apologizing to me dammit.
MattR
@PaulW:
Because he doesn’t give a crap about NPR. All he is apologizing for is using the word “”Nazi”. Not for thinking that all the connotations that go with that word apply to NPR.
Sarcastro
Surviving the Holocaust yesterday doesn’t mean you can’t be an asshole today.
Howlin Wolfe
It’s hard to believe that fat pecker hasn’t fallen over dead from a cario-vascular accident yet. What a disgusting POS he is.
timb
@Jay Schiavone: please cover this quotation in gold and encrust it with jewels and place it as the summation of Modern America 1980-2010 in every child’s textbook. There is more truth in this one statement (at three self-evident ones and because of this, you would never hear any villager ever mention them).
timb
@Michael: Great, we’re all now on some super secret DHS watch list. Thanks, Michael
timb
@Howlin Wolfe: And yet, even after he shuffles off this mortal coil, we will still living int he world he and Nixon and Lee Atwater made
DougW
How could any of you be surprised? Ailes is Hitler and the Nazi party and the SS all rolled up in one (very big body)…
His statements are typical republican projection.
Quiddity
Liberals are Fascists. NPR are Nazis. Obama is Karl Marx without the beard. The United Nations is taking over your neighborhood school. Jesus invented the Constitution. George Soros has a plan. MSNBC is the thin edge of the totalitarian wedge. The Tides Foundation wants to put a microchip in your brain. Every White House “Czar” has been given a Faberge egg worth millions. Flat panel TVs manufactured in China have a hidden camera so they can watch what you’re doing. The New Improved Black Panther Party is ACORN with nukes. Amendments other than the Bill of Rights diminish states’ rights and should be repealed. All taxation is theft. God Hates Fags. The War of Northern Aggression should be recognized as such. Michelle Bachmann belongs on the Supreme Court. Happiness is a 10 gauge shotgun. Dinesh D’Souza is the best journalist in America. If you are suffering, it’s God’s plan; turning to the government for aid is blasphemy. If you hang a clove of garlic around your neck, no Democrat will bite you. If you’re not listening to Limbaugh-Prager-Hannity-Medved-Levin, you’re not paying attention. Swarthy immigrants are putting battery acid in our ketchup bottles. That liberal co-worker who you think might be scheming to get you fired, really is. Every public library should have a dozen copies of whatever Newt Gingrich has written. Even Glenn Beck has underestimated the conspiracy to destroy America. If Global Warming is real, then why are they still selling sweaters at Wal-Mart? We need more rootin’ tootin’ straight-shootin’ common sense Christian constitutional conservatives running this country.