Excerpt of authorized bio of Roger AILES, preemptive to UNauthorized one later this year

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http://gawker.com/5988934/roger-ailes-is-exactly-the-kind-of-jerk-youd-expect-the-head-of-fox-news-to-be

[font size=5]Roger Ailes Is Exactly the Kind of Jerk You’d Expect the Head of Fox News to Be[/font]

Cord Jefferson

Roger Ailes is the pallid, smirking, ultra-rich white guy who sits atop the unrepentant lie factory that is Fox News. A new book about Ailes, Roger Ailes: Off Camera, is due out this month, and Vanity Fair has an excerpt. Off Camera was written by Zev Chafets—the man behind a cheerleading 2010 Rush Limbaugh biography—and has been viewed as a would-be preemptive strike against another Ailes biography coming out this year, from New York contributing editor Gabe Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room: Fox News and the Making of America.

The theory goes that Ailes played nice with Chafets—allowing him close access and patience—in order to try and discredit Sherman's presumably less rosy work, which is already being systematically battered by Fox News anchors, who have called Sherman a "phony" and "a stalker" on air. A less narcissistic and thin-skinned man than Ailes might have given that project the opportunity to go the way of most other intensively reported biographies of media executives. But Ailes can't conceive of himself as being an unimportant or uninteresting subject, so we get the thunderstorm and a whole bonus book.

Whatever ulterior motives are behind it, Off Camera, the excerpt at least, is an interesting read. Not because it contains any left-field twists or turns, or because it illuminates anything you might not expect about Ailes (yes, he is nice to his kid, but so are a lot of people because that is what you're supposed to do). It is largely interesting because it confirms a lot of the suspicions you probably already have about Ailes: that he is a mean bully operating under an aloof detachment from reality. It's surprising because it's not surprising, like when you turn on the hot water, touch the hot water, and then yank back your hand. Yep, that's hot water, all right. ....

Even a broken jackass is right twice a day, of course, and Ailes appears to get something correct every now and again: "One day during the 2012 primary season, Newt Gingrich complained that Fox News's support for Mitt Romney was responsible for Gingrich's poor showing. ... Ailes was silent for a moment and then added, 'Newt's a prick.'"

(Image via AP)

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