With Fox News’ co-founder Roger Ailes disgraced out of office, the new guard has taken the reigns. And guess what? The new guard... same as the old.
They’ve shuffled around a few people, promoted others and have agreed to continue the investigation into who did what under Ailes. Um… who did what in the Ailes era.
But one change is more significant than the others. Rupert Murdoch now works in Ailes’ old office. In one respect the significance is in the insignificance: A crusty oldster occupied the room for 20 years. Now a crustier older oldster sits there.
Interchangeable crusty oldsters? Maybe on the surface. But not beneath it. Realistically, Ailes was a hired hand. Murdoch is the company. Oh, yeah, his middle aged sons have titles. They have their own plans and ideas for the future. But for now, Fox still is a one man show.
Let’s here digress about rich guys -- or formerly rich guys.
Steve Forbes, the head of the Forbes magazine empire-turned- atoll once opined that by the time a third generation gets to run a family business, it’s… it’s... an atoll. Steve is of the third generation to run B.C. Forbes’ magazines and they have shrunk to near nothing. The irony may have been lost on him, though that’s hard to imagine.
Back to the Murdochs. Rupert has been around so long and so prominently that people may think he founded NewsCorp. But he is second generation. And that makes “the boys” the third. So if you think Fox is a pox, be patient.
Gen-3.0 is readying to carry on the Great March. But as long as The Man is alive, nothing is going to change. The minute he dies, the boys will start the downhill ride.
Shrapnel:
--Rest in peace Glenn Yarbrough, lead singer with the 1960s folk music trio the Limelighters. A troubled life after the folk bubble deflated, Yarbrough kept performing until recently. A friend of recent vintage, he was 86 and died of complications from dementia which didn’t show in our correspondence.
--We welcome aboard New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who has at last realized that Bill and Hillary are Republicans. That’s a point we’ve been making both here and on the air since 1992. Also, we welcome the Daily Beast’s expose as phony of Breitbart’s viral claim that Hillary is in bad health.
--Here’s proof you’re old: Over the weekend the Retro Game Expo on Long Island drew 15-hundred visitors. All of the “retros” were computer or video games. To some of us, a real retro game is stickball or potsy or Clue.
Grapeshot:
-The endless Olympics will soon be over and we can report happily that no one is known to have been sickened by whatever is in the sewer that passes for a river in Rio.
-We’d be grateful for the end of the endless Olympics’ even if the water were pure as a Colorado mountaintop snowfall.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2016
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