It was big news when Roger Ailes died. Everyone in his industry acknowledged that a serious, even transcendent force in American media and politics had passed away. Without Fox News over these last 20 years, the shape of American politics would be far different. The heretofore unanimously liberal media suddenly had a counterweight, and, much to their horror, this uppity network soon had surpassed all of its rivals in cable news — combined. The era of unchallenged liberal enlightenment was over. Ailes was accused of making American dumber, angrier and more bigoted.
One notable Ailes critic really stretched reality beyond the breaking point. The New York Times — just off a successful crusade to get Bill O’Reilly fired — recruited Monica Lewinsky to blame Ailes for her plight in 1998. Her piece in the Times was not an obituary for Ailes, she wrote, but “an obituary for the culture he purveyed.”
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