Gabriel Sherman’s ‘Loudest Voice in the Room’
Meet Roger Ailes, yet another political bully
By JACOB WEISBERG, NYT, JAN. 12, 2014
Twenty years ago, my wife and I bought a weekend house in the town of Garrison, N.Y., in the lower Hudson Valley. We love the place for its scenic beauty, its peace and quiet, and its old-fashioned sense of community. For us, it’s a refuge from the pace of city life, a place with an easygoing mix of lifestyles and a widely shared ethos about preserving what makes it special.
A few years ago, we found ourselves with a new neighbor. Roger Ailes, the chief executive of Fox News, seemed to be looking for something different when he moved to Garrison: not an escape, but a new arena for conflict. He bought the soothing local weekly, The Putnam County News & Recorder; named his wife, Elizabeth, publisher; and set about transforming it into The New York Post with field hockey scores. He fortified his hilltop property by buying up surrounding homes and installing an underground bunker with six months of survival rations. He began appearing at local meetings, Gabriel Sherman writes in his new book, with bodyguard and lawyer in tow, demanding to be heard in opposition to a zoning plan intended to limit future development. He drafted Republican candidates to run for town offices.
According to “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” Ailes dealt with Richard Shea, the well-liked and, as it turned out, impossible-to-intimidate supervisor of the small encompassing jurisdiction of Philipstown, by threatening, “I will destroy your life.” Shea is a born-and-bred local who runs a contracting business — precisely the kind of “little guy” Ailes claimed to be representing against environmental elitists. Others who crossed the Aileses, Sherman tells us, reported being threatened with lawsuits or Fox News trucks at their doorsteps, or in one case, being trailed by News Corporation security officers. Without the restraining influences of his parent company, Ailes has acted out in ways that terrified even his minions. Sherman says a young conservative who was imported to edit The News & Recorder became so frightened by Ailes’s surveillance of the staff and creepy personal comments that he quit and fled town. His replacement as editor, a destitute man’s Sean Hannity, continues to denounce critics as “anarchists” and “anti-Christian.”
(More here.)
By JACOB WEISBERG, NYT, JAN. 12, 2014
Twenty years ago, my wife and I bought a weekend house in the town of Garrison, N.Y., in the lower Hudson Valley. We love the place for its scenic beauty, its peace and quiet, and its old-fashioned sense of community. For us, it’s a refuge from the pace of city life, a place with an easygoing mix of lifestyles and a widely shared ethos about preserving what makes it special.
A few years ago, we found ourselves with a new neighbor. Roger Ailes, the chief executive of Fox News, seemed to be looking for something different when he moved to Garrison: not an escape, but a new arena for conflict. He bought the soothing local weekly, The Putnam County News & Recorder; named his wife, Elizabeth, publisher; and set about transforming it into The New York Post with field hockey scores. He fortified his hilltop property by buying up surrounding homes and installing an underground bunker with six months of survival rations. He began appearing at local meetings, Gabriel Sherman writes in his new book, with bodyguard and lawyer in tow, demanding to be heard in opposition to a zoning plan intended to limit future development. He drafted Republican candidates to run for town offices.
According to “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” Ailes dealt with Richard Shea, the well-liked and, as it turned out, impossible-to-intimidate supervisor of the small encompassing jurisdiction of Philipstown, by threatening, “I will destroy your life.” Shea is a born-and-bred local who runs a contracting business — precisely the kind of “little guy” Ailes claimed to be representing against environmental elitists. Others who crossed the Aileses, Sherman tells us, reported being threatened with lawsuits or Fox News trucks at their doorsteps, or in one case, being trailed by News Corporation security officers. Without the restraining influences of his parent company, Ailes has acted out in ways that terrified even his minions. Sherman says a young conservative who was imported to edit The News & Recorder became so frightened by Ailes’s surveillance of the staff and creepy personal comments that he quit and fled town. His replacement as editor, a destitute man’s Sean Hannity, continues to denounce critics as “anarchists” and “anti-Christian.”
(More here.)
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