Why Roger Ailes Is Full of It

In poker a tell is someone giving away his hand without knowing it. The person may make some kind of physical gesture or say something unintended. Roger Ailes of Fox News did the latter. Ailes complains in an interview that the Left and Right are equally culpable in the use of violent rhetoric. It would be unrealistic to say no one on the Left has ever used violent language. Ailes' complaint that both sides are equally at fault. Especially after he admits his own Fox News pundits and anchors are out of control.

I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that.

This is laughable if you know Ailes' background. Ailes decribed NPR has Nazis.

But in the piece published Thursday, Ailes spoke of NPR executives: "They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view."

Ailes worked on the George H.W. Bush campaign in 1988. Ailes helped Lee Atwater with the infamous Willie Horton ad. Ailes said about the ad: "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."

Ailes makes his Fox News pudits look like masters of reasonable discourse