The day was brutal, the cold unrelenting, it entered my bones, it is there still. We found a way to brighten it, we fed and grained the animals, we went to see George Forss at his Theater Of The Arts. We had planned to listen to some opera from Lincoln Center – George has loved opera his whole life – but we couldn’t stay as long as we wished because of the storm, which was already icing up the roads.
George had a great treat in store for us, he showed us a video of some interviews and profiles of him done in the 1980’s – with the Tom Brokaw on the Today Show, a segment on Entertainment Tonight, and a beautifully shot piece by the BBC, which followed George around New York City and then superimposed George’s photographs on the scenes and buildings they had captured.
We dimmed the lights, listened to George’s “surround sound,” were warmed by his pole heater in the middle of the room, George is an artist every day in every way.
It was striking to go back in time and see George at the zenith of his career, as this street peddler from Brooklyn was getting accolades from some of the most famous photographers in the world. George sat next to Maria and I, eating popcorn with us, petting Red, watching quietly as his life and work came across on the screen. He gave me a computer file, I’m trying to figure out how to upload it and share it with all of you on the blog. George is going ahead with his own Kickstarter project, it is called “The Way We Were,” he will seek roughly $9,000 in funding to self-publish a book of his pre-911 photographs of New York, brilliant images that have never been published. We have begun working on the page, it won’t be up for a couple of weeks.
George was discovered by David Douglas Duncan, one of the most famous photographers in the world, when Duncan saw his work spread out on a Manhattan sidewalk, for sale for $5 apiece. Soon, George was in Time Magazine and all over television, getting praise for his work from photographers all over the world. I watched George as these videos popped up on his big screen, I could see it was affecting him, but George doesn’t talk much about his emotions. It sure affected me, especially the scenes of George hustling his photos on sidewalks, dodging the police and the rain, and of his mother, crippled with arthritis, struggling to talk for the television interviewers.
In the films, George seemed a bit lost, as he said in one of the interviews “I am always an outsider,” and that is true. Celebrity did not come naturally to him, he is never glib or easy talking about himself.
As we left George and Donna Wyndbrandt, his longtime lover and companion, came to the door to kiss one another goodbye. Next week George and I are unveiling our first photo show together at the Round House Cafe in Cambridge, N.Y. There will be a reception for us and the show on September 20 at 7 p.m. at the Round House, more details to come.
George is a special man, a genius and a good friend. I hope to spent many quiet afternoons with him, listening to the opera from New York, munching his popcorn in the paper “popcorn” bags Maria brought him.
I should say up front that Roger Ailes, the man who built Fox News, would probably consider me a product of the hated “liberal media” he rages against so often, I worked at the Washington Post, CBS News, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer. It doesn’t matter that I don’t consider myself a member of the “left” or the “right,” you no longer get to choose the labels tacked onto you by others in America, and Roger Ailes is one of the reasons why.
This is an important and grippingly readable book for anyone who wants to understand the fear, anger and polarization have engulfed our national media, and to a great extent, our paralyzed Congress. Everything in America – everything from the judiciary to the weather has become politicized, an expression of the suffocatingly narrow ideology of a country with only two points of view. Ailes had a lot to do with all of that, on Fox News there is only one.
I watched some news on Fox to prepare for this review, it was perhaps a bit worse than I expected, which was not much. The xenophobia, bigotry, and shamelessly biased political propaganda are on clear display, anyone can see it, there is no effort to be coy about what the network is setting out to do. There is no effort to explore or promote truth, it is a pure and simple anger and fear machine, I would be mortified to work there and grateful I never did.
Sherman did not write the hatchet job Ailes apparently expected – Ailes was so rattled by Sherman’s book he commissioned a “friendly” biography – “Roger Ailes: Off Camera” by Zev Chafets – that came out last year to blunt the impact of “The Loudest Voice In The Room: How The Brllliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes built Fox News and Divided A Country,” by Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine.
No one in this century with the possible exception of William Randolph Hearst has changed modern media as much as Ailes. In fact, there are a lot of connections between the two. Hearst build a right-wing media empire out of newspapers and hid out at San Simeon, his castle in California. Ailes built a powerful right-wing national TV news organization and hides out in a castle in Garrison, N.Y., he has bought all of the houses around him and built a “panic room” in the basement stocked with six months of provisions. No one will remember either of them to fondly.
Ailes impact may be more lasting than Hearst, he practically invented political consulting, helped elect Richard Nixon. At Fox, he found his destiny, he gave a voice to the Angry Nation, millions of mostly white males seething at what they believed was a takeover of their values by people who were not really American. I was surprised to learn that Ailes didn’t simply permit Glenn Beck to rant on Fox News that President Obama “hates whites,” or wasn’t born in America, but that he actually believes it. As Ailes made clear in his editorial meetings, attacking the President wasn’t just a good story, it had become the point of the enterprise. “Is Obama A Socialist?” asks a frequent Fox poll question. It’s an old and effective trick, you make the statement by posing it as a question, it doesn’t need to be answered or even stated.
Some journalists were once so respected that both Democrats and Republicans paid attention to them. The America of James Reston, Charles Kuralt, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite drew vast numbers of Americans with all kinds of political views. This was Jefferson’s idea about media, everybody comes together to see one another’s ideas and forge a common purpose. Ailes shattered this fundamental American tradition, he created a bubble in which the disenchanted talk only to one another, they never hear other points of view or have to face the truth. You won’t see stories of cities flooding due to global warming, it just doesn’t exist on Fox. Any criticism of conservatives or Republicans is now simply dismissed as the evil machinations of the liberal media, Fox News has barely mentioned the bridge scandal afflicting Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.
Anyone who pays attention to Washington for more than a few minutes can see the profound damage to the political system this new ideology has wrought. Washington is not longer the seat of democracy, it is a hateful and dysfunctional place. There are no more nationally respected journalists, only prophets of the “left” and the “right.” This was Ailes idea, and it worked for him. I suspect it will be his legacy. The country and it’s vaunted democracy will be a long time getting over him, as it was getting over Hearst.
I always had this notion that the ranting campaigns on Fox News – the “War On Christmas,” the President’s secret militia, the “hoax” of global warming, the vapid observations of Sarah Palin, the – were just lunatic marketing ploys designed to build ratings,but it turns out Ailes actually believes them, I’m not sure which is worse. Ailes is a complex men, as presented by Sherman’s meticulously researched book (the notes at the end are as long as some books), and a sensitive one. He wants to be loved, but can’t stop himself from being hateful and making enemies.
Because Ailes knew his audience at Fox would be largely white men, he insisted on hiring leggy blondes and railed at them when they wore long pants, he wanted Fox News anchors to show a lot of leg. There are, in fact, blondes all over the place at Fox News, and a lot of leg. Sherman found a lot of female ex-employees at Fox, their stories are pretty horrid.
The Ailes of this book, meticulously documented by author Gabriel Sherman is a brilliant man, an intuitive visionary who understand television and politics and entertainment and fused all three into a new kind of blatantly political medium that has become one of the most powerful forces in American life. Whatever one thinks of it, Fox News is an astounding achievement, Ailes pounded his many rivals – the networks, MSNBC, CNN – nearly into the ground. It was not ever pretty or nice, Aile’s rise is followed by a lengthy trail of blood, betrayal, trauamatized employees, no-holds barred corporate combat.
Although Ailes insists Fox News is objective, Sherman describes in overwhelming detail how Fox has become the quasi-official media arm of the Republican Party, especially its extreme right wing. Ailes is up to his neck in plotting Republican political campaigns, choosing candidates, giving politicians regular air time on Fox, especially relentlessly attacking President Obama. I know of no national journalistic institution – the so-called “liberal media” – that would have tolerated so much blatant conflict of interest.
The book is tough reading for me in a way, it seems to me Sherman tried hard to be fair, but the rages, score-settling, intimidation and tantrums that swirl around Ailes are unsettling, they explain Ailes great success, they even explain his sensitivity and vulnerability. He is, of course, a human being and a damaged one. But this is not the portrait of a very nice or happy man, and surely not one of a journalist committed to the public welfare. Nor does he come across as evil, his fury seems as much of a compulsion as it does an ideology, a damagiing one. Largely because of Ailes, media has begun breaking off into “left” and “right” camps, no longer eager to unite or inform, but happy to inflame and argue and pander. Fox begats MSNBC, everyone has to move to the left or right, Jefferson’s dream has collapsed.
A few years ago, Ailes moved to Garrison, N.Y., a sleepy, old-fashioned and peaceful second-home community on the Lower Hudson river. He apparently wasn’t looking for peace, he was looking for conflict. He bought the sleepy local weekly paper, named his wife Elizabeth the publisher and turned it, says one resident “into The New York Post with field hockey scores.” Ailes fortified his hilltop property, built his panic room and began appearing at local meetings with a bodyguard and lawyer, demanding to be heard on zoning issues, threatening and demeaning liberals, recruiting like-minded Republicans to run for local office, bullying people who opposed him. According to Sherman, he to threatened the town supervisor by promising him that “I will destroy your life,” a credible threat, something he had successfully done to others many times.
“Garrison” wrote Jacob Weisberg in The New York Times Book Review, “is the key to understanding Ailes because it’s a microcosm of what he’s spent his career doing to the country. He could have moved there and live and let live. Instead, in a way that seems to have been almost involuntary, he recapitulated the culture that he was already busily inciting at the national level.”
I thought the Garrison story as told by Sherman was the most revealing in the book – Ailes did not have an easy childhood or an easy life – it also made me feel the most for Ailes. For all of his brilliance, bravado and bullying, his life in Garrison revealed him as a lonely, unhappy and profoundly needy and insecure man, caught up in an endless cycle of confrontation and perceived betrayal. Like Hearst, no one was ever loyal enough, like Hearst, he seems alone in a vast sea of acolytes, butt-kissers and gophers. Sherman describes how Ailes’s lifelong struggles with hemophilia shaped his determined and combative character.
His character flaws and rages would have buried most executives, but this is America, and people who earn billions of dollars for their corporate masters do not get fired for being bullies and thugs.
I don’t like cable news, Fox is the worst of it, none of it is very good or useful. I don’t know anyone who watches cable news who isn’t angry, it is a system designed to fuel the prejudices and ignorance of the people watching it, it promotes conflict, it sells addiction to outrage and ignorance. Ailes has as much contempt for his own seething viewers as he does for the liberal journalists perpetually warring on Christmas, one of his earliest and most successful of Fox’s many annual divisive editorial campaigns. In fact, Ailes has contempt for just about everyone, including many of the ultra-conservative politicians he promotes (he allegedly referred to Sarah Palin as “stupid,” then offered her a contract to appear on Fox.
This is a very good book, and I highly recommended it, it will help anyone who reads it understand the bitter divisions in the American political landscape. I admire Sherman’s effort to offer a thorough, rather than simply negative portrait – a hatchet job wouldn’t have been useful to anyone, I would have put it down. But Ailes is who he is, it is the portrait of a gifted and shattered human being, and I can’t promise anyone reading this book that they will like him, even if they agree with him. I do think they will understand him and the phenomena he created. Ailes genius for television marketing and the underside of American politics is well documented, so is the incalculable damage he has done the very idea of honest journalism and a common civic purpose.
I’m afraid that is how he will be remembered.
This is a really good book, if you wish, you can order it through Battenkill Books, my local bookstore by calling 518 677-2515 or visiting the store’s website.
The old Red farmhouse gate down the right is one of the elegant architectural survivors around here, the design and construction of the gate has more artistry than most modern housing developments incorporate into all of their houses combined. It was once the carriage gate to the gracious farmhouse looming in the back, the gate is closed off now, the farmhouse has a modern driveway in the back, the gate has not been opened in many years, I imagine.
Still, it is the rightful gate, it speaks for itself, it is proud and dignified still, years after it was closed off for asphalt. In our world, we can just be grateful it has been permitted to survive.
The weather channels didn’t send out any warnings, there were no text alerts or advisories, they didn’t name this storm, but it was one of the ugliest and coldest and windiest in a long time, and it is going on still, the howling winds began early in the morning and blew a fine and freezing snow through every crack in every window and barn.
This is a testing winter, I feel every day for the animals, we opened up a big stall deep in the barn for shelter from the wind and the snow, we piled the ground with old hay, dragged the feeders inside the Pole Barn, my frostbitten fingers shrieked in protest, by the end of the day I couldn’t work the camera, it was frozen and so were my fingers. I’ll do an album shortly on Facebook.
Today was one of those dogs when a border collie can show you what he or she can mean to a farm with animals. This winter means to make itself felt, and a surprise wind, snow and ice storm swept down upon us, this time with howling winds that kept the animals huddled in the Pole Barn, we were caught off guard and went to make sure our animals were all right and also to grain them and put hay out in a narrow space with restless and hungry animals.
In this kind of weather, around grain, the donkeys and the sheep can both lose control and bang into one another – and us. In their efforts to keep the sheep off of their food, the donkeys will sometimes kick out and it can be dangerous to be behind, Red’s task was to sit just outside of the pole barn and keep the sheep in place, he had to sit outside in the freezing snow and wind for nearly 15 minutes, he never moved, flinched or blinked. I couldn’t bear to leave him out any longer, and my fingers were no longer moving, so I called him.
It was enough time for the donkeys to eat their grain, the sheep theirs. It stayed neat and orderly, it stayed safe.
Some days you loved a dog, some days you need a dog, I am glad he was here.
