“Critical Race Theory” = Willie Horton. – Barker Ajax
On October 26, 1974, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Horton and two accomplices robbed Joseph Fournier, a white 17-year-old gas station attendant, and then fatally stabbed Fournier 19 times after he had cooperated by handing over all of the money in the cash register. His body was stuffed in a trash can so his feet were jammed up against his chin. Fournier died from blood loss. Horton was convicted of murder, sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and incarcerated at the Northeastern Correctional Center in Massachusetts.
On June 6, 1986, Horton was released as part of a weekend furlough program, but did not return. On April 3, 1987, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Horton twice raped a woman after pistol-whipping, knifing, binding, and gagging her fiancé. He then stole the car belonging to the man he had assaulted. He was later shot by Corporal Paul J. Lopez of the Prince George’s County Police Department and captured by Corporal Yusuf A. Muhammad of the same department after a pursuit. On October 20, Horton was sentenced in Maryland to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years. The sentencing judge, Vincent J. Femia, refused to return Horton to Massachusetts, saying, “I’m not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again.”
On April 18, 1996, Horton was transferred to the Jessup Correctional Institution (then called the Maryland House of Correction Annex), a maximum security prison in Jessup, Maryland, where he remains.
Peter Baker remembered (NYT, 12/3/18) Willie Horton when he was remembering the newly deceased G.H.W. Bush.
Mr. Bush’s successful campaign for the presidency in 1988 was marked in part by the racially charged politics of crime that continues to reverberate to this day. The Willie Horton episode and the political advertising that came to epitomize it remain among the most controversial chapters in modern politics, a precursor to campaigns to come and a decisive force that influenced criminal justice policy for decades.
Mr. Horton was an African-American prisoner in Massachusetts who, while released on a furlough program, raped a white Maryland woman and bound and stabbed her boyfriend. Mr. Bush’s campaign and supporters cited the case as evidence that his Democratic opponent, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, was insufficiently tough on crime. […]
By summer, Mr. Bush picked up the theme, citing the case during speeches, and by fall, his campaign began airing an ad attacking the Massachusetts furlough program, showing a series of prisoners walking through a revolving door. But that Bush campaign ad did not mention Mr. Horton.
The one that would be remembered for years to come was produced not by the Bush campaign but by an operative named Larry McCarthy working for an ostensibly independent group called the National Security Political Action Committee. The ad, called “Weekend Passes,” singled out Horton, showing a picture of his scowling face as the narrator described his torture and rape of the Maryland couple. In the end, it was shown only briefly on cable television, but its impact was magnified by repeated coverage on television newscasts.
When critics called the ad a brazen appeal to racial fears, the Bush campaign distanced itself from the ad and wrote to the committee that aired it asking that it be withdrawn. But Mr. Dukakis did not buy the explanation that the committee was independent. “Anybody who believes that believes in the tooth fairy,” he said at one point.
Indeed, Mr. Bush’s advisers had been focused on Mr. Horton for months. “If I can make Willie Horton a household name, we’ll win the election,” said Lee Atwater, the campaign strategist. He later referred to making Horton “Dukakis’s running mate.”
Roger Ailes, another Bush strategist, said, “The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it.”
Ailes’s career in television began in Cleveland and Philadelphia, where he started as production assistant (1961), producer (1965), and executive producer (1967–68) for KYW-TV, for a then-locally produced talk-variety show, The Mike Douglas Show. He continued as executive producer for the show when it was syndicated nationally, and in 1967 and 1968 he won Emmy Awards for it.
In 1967, Ailes had a spirited discussion about television in politics with one of the show’s guests, Richard Nixon, who took the view that television was a gimmick. Later, Nixon called on Ailes to serve as his Executive Producer for television. Nixon’s successful presidential campaign was Ailes’s first venture into the political spotlight. His pioneering work in framing national campaign issues, capitalizing on the race-based Southern strategy and making the stiff Nixon more likable and accessible to voters was later chronicled in The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinniss.
Political consulting
In 1984, Ailes worked on the campaign to reelect Ronald Reagan. In 1987 and 1988, Ailes was credited (along with fellow consultant Lee Atwater) with guiding George H. W. Bush to victory in the Republican primaries and the victory over Michael Dukakis.
Ailes was credited with the “Orchestra Pit Theory” regarding sensationalist political coverage in the news media, which originated with his quip:
If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, “I have a solution to the Middle East problem,” and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?
Ailes’s last campaign was the unsuccessful effort of Richard Thornburgh for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in November 1991. He announced his withdrawal from political consulting in 1991.
America’s Talking channel
Ailes eventually made his way back to television, this time focusing on cable news. In 1993, he became president of CNBC and later created the “America’s Talking” channel, which would eventually become MSNBC. [Interesting.] He hosted an interview program on America’s Talking. In 1995, NBC hired a law firm to conduct an internal investigation after Roger Ailes allegedly called NBC executive David Zaslav a “little fucking Jew prick.” This was not confirmed as the reason for his departure.
I am guessing, he’s circumcized, too.
20th Television/Fox News
Ailes was hired by News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch in 1996 to become the CEO of Fox News, effective on October 7.
In January 2011, 400 rabbis, including leaders from various branches of Judaism in the United States, published an open letter in The Wall Street Journal on the UN-designated Holocaust Remembrance Day. They called on Rupert Murdoch to sanction Fox News commentator Glenn Beck for his use of the Holocaust to “discredit any individual or organization you disagree with.” An executive at Fox News rejected the letter, calling it the work of a “George Soros-backed left wing political organization.” Ailes is also said to have once referred to Jewish critics of his as “left-wing rabbis.”
Also in 2011, Ailes was criticized for referring to executives of the public radio network NPR as “Nazis” for firing a news analyst, Juan Williams, after Williams had made remarks considered by NPR to be offensive. Ailes apologized to a Jewish group, but not to NPR, for using the expression, writing to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL): “I was of course ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word, but I was angry at the time because of NPR’s willingness to censor Juan Williams for not being liberal enough … My now considered opinion ‘nasty, inflexible bigot’ would have worked better.”
The ADL welcomed and accepted the apology through its National Director, Abraham Foxman; in a subsequent letter to The Wall Street Journal Foxman said that both Ailes and Beck were “pro-Israel stalwarts.” In October 2012, his contract with the network was renewed for four years, through 2016. If completed, he would have served as head of Fox News Channel for 20 years. Salary terms were not made public, although his earnings for the 2012 fiscal year were $21 million inclusive of bonuses. In addition to heading Fox News and chairing Fox Television Stations, Ailes also chaired 20th Television, MyNetworkTV and Fox Business Network.
Sexual harassment cases
In a book published in 2014, Gabriel Sherman alleged that, in the 1980s, Ailes offered a television producer a raise if she would sleep with him. Fox News denied the allegation and rejected the authenticity of Sherman’s book.
On July 6, 2016, former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Ailes; Carlson’s allegations were the impetus for more than a dozen female employees at 21st Century Fox to step forward regarding their own experiences with Ailes’s behaviour. Carlson alleged that she had been fired for rebuffing Ailes’s advances. Ailes, through his attorney, Susan Estrich, denied the charges. Three days later, Sherman reported accounts from six women (two publicly and four anonymously) who alleged sexual harassment by Ailes.
In response, Ailes’s counsel released a statement: “It has become obvious that Ms. Carlson and her lawyer are desperately attempting to litigate this in the press because they have no legal case to argue.”
I am guessing it’s a lot like that little fucking Jew prick.
Resignation
Ten days later, New York magazine reported that an internal review into Carlson’s claims had expanded into a broader review of Ailes’s stewardship. It also claimed Rupert Murdoch and his sons, Lachlan and James, had seen enough information in the preliminary review to conclude that Ailes had to go. They disagreed on the timing, however; James wanted Ailes out immediately, while Rupert and Lachlan wanted to wait until after the Republican National Convention. On July 19, New York reported that Megyn Kelly told investigators Ailes made “unwanted sexual advances toward her” at the start of her career. The magazine also reported that the Murdochs had given Ailes an ultimatum—resign by August 1 or be fired.
On July 21, 2016, Ailes resigned from Fox News, receiving $65 million from 21st Century Fox (the then-parent company of 20th Century Fox and Fox News) in an exit agreement. Rupert Murdoch succeeded him as chairman, and as interim CEO until the naming of a permanent replacement. In a letter to Murdoch, Ailes wrote: “I will not allow my presence to become a distraction from the work that must be done every day to ensure that Fox News and Fox Business continue to lead our industry.” Ailes was thanked for his work, without mention of the allegations. He continued to advise Murdoch and 21st Century Fox through 2017 until his death.
After 20th Television and Fox News
Following Ailes’s resignation, Andrea Tantaros claimed in August 2016 that she approached Fox News executives about Ailes’s behavior towards her in 2015. She stated that her allegations resulted first in her being demoted, and then in her being taken off the air in April 2016. Tantaros filed a lawsuit against Fox News in August 2016 for sexual harassment, also accusing Bill O’Reilly and Scott Brown.
On August 8, 2016, Shelley Ross, writing for The Daily Beast, described her encounter of sexual harassment with Ailes in 1981. She claimed that at a lunch meeting Ailes asked her, “When did you first discover you were sexy?” When Ross explained to Ailes that she found the conversation “very embarrassing,” he responded that “the best expression of loyalty comes in the form of a sexual alliance.”
The next month, 21st Century Fox announced it had settled a lawsuit with Carlson over her allegations of harassment against Ailes. 21st Century Fox was also reported to have made separate settlements with at least two other women who made complaints about Ailes.
In November 2016, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly wrote in her book about the details of her sexual abuse allegations against Ailes. According to Kelly, when she first joined Fox News, Ailes would have meetings with her, during which he would make sexual remarks. Kelly alleges that he also tried to kiss her several times during a closed-door meeting, but she was able to get away and leave the office. After that incident in 2006, Kelly says that Ailes did not sexually harass her again. Then, in 2016, when Gretchen Carlson first made her sexual abuse allegations, 21st Century Fox pressured Kelly to defend Ailes, which she refused to do.
In 2016, after he left Fox News, he became an adviser to the Donald Trump campaign, where he assisted with debate preparation.
