Thursday, April 27, 2017

Nothing Like a Fox Mushroom Farm Vacation

Suddenly going "on vacation" from Fox Mushroom Farm is a phrase that has taken an ominous turn since the Bill O'Reilly parting of ways, but I don't know. Could things have gotten so touchy at the network that Jesse Watters could be "let go" over a crude comment? Crude long seems to have been part of the shtick--he does shocking stuff and people watch and some get offended and some don't. Fox News didn't have such an issue with the entertainment value of sheer assholery before. (Perhaps the problem is who he made the comment about?)  This particular "vacation" is probably more of a "time-out".

So much for Watters--but it does seem like there is an awful lot going on with FNC Titanic that moving deck chairs alone won't fix. Take the racial discrimination suit--when you stop and think of things that have been said on air, it's not that difficult to believe that people acted in just the way their words indicate that they would, in just the way that on-air sexism makes claims of sexual harassment quite believable.

There's more to it though--there are two federal investigations into the news outlet going on. This in part might have to do with how the company tried to put the kibosh on earlier complaints with, well, "hush money".  But I can't say that seems like all there is to it. Roger Ailes may have left last July, but from what I've read about him, it seems like he treated news as ammunition in a ideological war, and held to the "all is fair in war" doctrine. Who knows what the company was up to?

Certainly, other top management figures at Fox News have reason to be nervous, as well as on-air talent. A "vacation" could well await.

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