George Will, who has been a conservative presence on ABC News for more than three decades, is leaving for the Fox News Channel, the cable news network announced on Tuesday.
A Will/Palin Christmas Special in Alaska is an obvious first show idea for George. Maybe now that Will is working in close proximity with Hannity, we might finally fully understand just exactly why browns and poors are so lazy and shiftless. The possibilities are endless, and with George being a spry young lad of 72, he has at least a decade at Fox to completely ruin what little is left of his reputation as a serious conservative.
schrodinger's cat
Why is he considered serious? Because of the toupe’ and the bow-tie?
Tokyokie
George Will’s professed love for baseball makes me question my own.
MoeLarryAndJesus
George Will seems like the kind of guy who has a large collection of snuff films.
Fledermaus
Pretty much. He looks like what a stupid person would consider an intellectual. Also he uses big words sometimes.
njb
Or perhaps a Palin / Will special on global warming.
the Conster
All that time slobbering Republican knobs still won’t get him any lips.
WereBear
Bow tie. Until Tucker Carlson ruined it.
H.K. Anders
At 72, Will is so much younger than the average Fox viewer, they might have trouble taking him seriously, the little whippersnapper.
piratedan
the village and PBS/NPR love him because he oozes reasonableness, a quiet, non-assuming sonorousness which covers up a whole lotta missed civics classes.
Violet
Are there going to be any conservatives left on any of the other networks, or will they all end up on Fox?
WereBear
Mr. WereBear likes flipping over to Faux to see what’s up during crises, it usually makes my blood pressure soar like a breeching whale…
But I must admit it was glorious the night of the 2012 election, when we switched channels in time to see Karl Rove’s meltdown.
As Stephen King likes to say, Last time pays for all.
c u n d gulag
Never mind his idiotic Conservative ideology.
I made the horrible mistake of buying his book about Baseball – in the simplistic belief that no one writing about that great sport could possibly make baseball even more boring than the people who complain about
baseball being boring, think it is.
WRONG!!!!!!!
It is simply the singly worst fucking book ever written about that, or any other, sport!
Will knows even less about Baseball, than he does politics.
Maybe I’ll write him an e-mail at FUX, and ask the asshole for a refund.
Botsplainer
FTFY
Don’t thank me for the mental image. Just savor the possibilities….
Ash Can
What took him so long?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think it was Molly Ivins who once wrote, in I forget which context “George Will may turn up his icy blue nose at such ideas…”
I always thought that icy blue nose might be out of joint from being asked to share a panel with the likes of Ann Coulter and Mary Matalin, but I guess that’s what he’s comfortable with these days.
@Fledermaus: you remind me of another shot at GWill that might’ve been the late, great, lamented Miss Molly, something like, “In a move that will surely have George Will’s intern scouring Bartlett’s Book of Quotations for what seems like an apposite scholarly recollection to open his next column…”
Violet
@WereBear: That was a thing of beauty. Loved watching it happen in real time.
Ash Can
@Botsplainer: Are you trying to get banned from the entire Interweb?
drkrick
He’s a made Villager. Nothing else matters.
Since I understand the sale of the Washington Post to Bezos closed yesterday, maybe he thinks he’d better change his broadcast home now to allow a decent interval before the change in print homes. At least these moves, unlike his first marriage, will probably go off without his skivvies winding up in the front yard.
Breezeblock
Huh. Pixies.
raven
Fucking dickhead went to Uni High in Urbana!
Southern Beale
Fox News is the biggest cancer on our discourse that I can think of. Just came from the vet’s office where someone asked to change the TV channel off of the soap opera it was tuned to. Crankly old white man across the room asked for “Fox News so we can see what OBAMA is up to!” I told him over my dead fucking body.
Tom Hamill
I rather think Krugman’s frequent appearances on this week and the facile way he swats away Will’s conservative nonsense was a motivating factor in his departure.
Who’s next on This Week? Daniel Larison, we can only hope.
Elliot Rosewater
I applaud FOx News for trying to reach a younger demographic.
ranchandsyrup
Slicin up eyeballs. Uh huh huh huh.
George Will es un chien adalusia
Chris
Since he’s transferring to Fox News from A Channel Not Named Fox News, does that mean he’ll be the Token Liberal on that network? Soon to be run out of town for not having followed The Narrative exactly, or loudly enough?
Scott P.
This never gets old.
EdTheRed
Don’t know about you,
But I am un chien Andalusia
EDIT: Ah, I see ranchandsyrup got there first. (Come on, Pilgrim, you know he loves you!)
SteveinSC
As a Fucks News operative, he could help coach Sarah Palin and other Teahadists for debates, like he did Ronald Raygun, and then volunteer to referee the debate. He’s at a network that calls that fair and balanced. Disgusting hypocrite and flaming Asshole.
KXB
I guess his sports show was not picked up
KXB
@Scott P.:
Beat me to it.
dogwood
Who cares where George Will parks his pompous ass. He’ll probably be replaced by Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann which will improve ABC’s ratings with the nutter crowd.
CarolDuhart2
At 72, I’m surprised that he doesn;’t just retire and write books. He has enough “centrist” cred that it would do okay, and I’m certain enough cash to tide him over.
So why get in the clown car?
cathyx
I have to say that this surprises me. He tries to portray himself as serious, and even he has to agree that Fox doesn’t portray itself that way.
MikeJ
@CarolDuhart2:
Because he likes doing it. He gets to go into work everyday and be told how smart he is and that all of his enemies are evilevilevil. For doing that he’ll get a nice paycheck and the illusion that he matters.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
good. Get him off a broadcast network and on to a shitty cable station few watch.
cathyx
Maybe Fox lured him there saying they want to change their image. Didn’t they get rid of Hannity too? Or was that just the radio?
Hawes
If only ABC and others would quit going out and looking for another barrel of monkeys. If all the conservatives want to go talk within the Bubble, let them. But don’t let the Bubble contaminate the rest of the world.
Mike in NC
George Will’s most memorable column came out the day after the attempted coup against Gorbachev, in which he gloated about the stupid dirty commies being so untrustworthy, etc. and suggested the USofA needed to build a much bigger nuclear arsenal. Of course Gorby was back on top a couple of days later and George fucking Will never again brought up the subject.
ranchandsyrup
@EdTheRed: G. Will’s the type of guy that would buy you a soda and then try to molest you in the parking lot.
Mr. Longform
Being a Cubs fan was horrible enough by itself. Identifying with the team owned by the Rickets family and rooted for by George Effing Will was too much. I now just seethe in fan-less limbo hoping everyone loses (not that I really have to hope too hard for the Cubs to lose…)
Jerry Indiana
@raven: Yeah, Will is an alumnus of Uni High. Roger Ebert, OTOH, went to good old Urbana High School.
MazeDancer
@cathyx:
Surprises me, too. Had thoughts like maybe he has gambling debts. Or they promised him that Fox was going to start publishing serious political e-books and he would be editor in chief with his own staff of interns. Or he likes the idea of being the “Smart One” and when he went to discuss it they all grovelled and called him Mr. Will.
George Effing Will as Mr. Pierce says. Why would he jettison any hope of any shred of his alleged reputation as a Serious Journalist ever remaining? Some kind of pseudo Department Chair at some third-tier college would make more sense.
He must need the money.
geg6
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
This. What it really means is that Will’s schtick has gotten so old that only the golden years nutters who watch FOXNews want to put up with him. Ailes is, in the end, going to hire every ancient racist Luddite they can find in order to keep their audience.
Which I find to be a massive win for the rest of the country.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@MoeLarryAndJesus:
This.
Ben Cisco
So he’s off to Faux, huh? Good, that means I’ll never see him again unless he does something mockable by either Colbert, Stewart, or you guys.
danielx
My man George will still have his Kaplan Daily column to maintain his status as a Very Serious Person.
StringOnAStick
@Southern Beale: Good for you! I think most normal people just tolerate it when Faux is on in some public place; it’s well past time to fight back against that propagandistic crap. I hope the old crank went home cussin’ about that mouthy feminazi who denied him his rage fix.
shortstop
I wrote several baseball trade metaphors for this situation. But they weren’t that funny, so never mind.
shortstop
@StringOnAStick: I took a cruise with my parents and the only satellite cable news on board was Fox. I frankly didn’t care, because I rarely watch cable even when landlubbin’ and shit. Also, I had no intention of ever cruising again, so who cares what’s on their TVs? However, when the equivalent of Julie, Your Cruise Director buttonholed me on deck and asked how I was enjoying my cruise and what they could do to improve it, I earnestly told her I was a five-times-a-year cruiser and their line had lost me forever because of Fox. I added that they were going to lose everyone else under 100 if they didn’t knock it off soonest. She was semi-freaking out.
rodnchance
I could not be happier for ABC, maybe now (though I doubt it) they can replace him with an actual human being, one that has some real compassion and does not hide his own inadequacies behind large words and base ball metaphors.
Maeve
So did I, but not at the same time. He did write a column about us when we won our first basketball game in three years. We weren’t called Puny Uni for nothing!
RaflW
George being a spry young lad of 72 – or approximately 2 years older that Fox’s average demo.
He may as well be fully and avowedly inside the Rupert bubble. That’s all he’s worth.
Spike
I still can’t quite decide which is the debaser and which the debasee.
Ripley
Triumph of the Fwill.