Trump and the Triumph of Fox News

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Back in the days when I toiled in a basement that had once been the Sam Goody record store on Sixth Ave. in New York City, it would be hard to imagine a week like this. That was where news writers and the staff of shows hosted by people like Hannity, Colmes, Regan, and O’Reilly worked, and where the Fox News Channel was born.

The first surprise of this week is the news that MSNBC, which was then across the Hudson River in Ft. Lee, N.J., is being put up for auction. And while no one should be happy other people are losing their jobs, their demise is a reminder of the old adage “pride precedeth the fall.” While we were struggling to survive and grow at FNC, people on the “news pod” would routinely get calls from their former colleagues working across the river.

The MSNBC crowd would brag about how they just got a new million-dollar set for one of their shows and how our sets were bare bones. They mocked our viewership numbers, which it was said wouldn’t even fill a baseball stadium. They had names — names! — not the right-wing crazies we had. It irritated our people. Some even longed to jump ship. But we kept working, and the production guys working in the video suites seemed to have Bart Simpson on a continual loop. Disney had Mickey Mouse, Fox had Bart Simpson ready to poke the big boys in the eye.

Some of us had a lot of faith in the ability of the man we nicknamed “dad” to keep the food on the table for us and our families. Mr. Murdock had the touch when it came to making media profitable. And Roger Ailes was no slouch when it came to understanding what the public wanted. As the old song says, who has the last laugh now?

And while FNC has lost some of its new-kid-on-the-block luster and the new generation of leadership has moved closer to the non-edgy center, its on-air talent and green room guests have become for the Trump administration what the New York Times and Washington Post were for Democrats. It is a farm team for administration talent. The media-government revolving door is moving in a new direction now.

As for those on the right who doubt this Trump pick or that for the new administration, please disband your futile circular firing squad.

I want to share with you a dream I had on Election Day. It was the strangest dream I’ve ever had. I dreamt about a bizarre dystopia.

Now, there was a strange Pee Wee Herman-like character in this dream. He was a gay mayor of a Midwest city with 12 residents. He was frantically riding his tricycle to Washington, D.C. As he passed Dulles International Airport, he jumped off his tricycle and ran inside. There, he morphed into a bald transgender dude. This guy-gal began wearing women’s clothes he was pinching off the baggage carousel. When asked why, he said it was so he could be safe visiting nuclear waste sites. But while viewing the nuclear waste, you won’t believe this, his hair grew back suddenly long, and now he-she was wearing an admiral’s uniform.

This scary admiral went to the Pentagon, where there was a general screaming that white supremacy, not war, was the biggest threat to our nation. But some lawyer general was screaming back at him that Catholics were plotting violence against the country and needed close watching by the police. As they both got redder and redder in the face, yelling their crazy talk, the admiral intervened. He called in the head of the FBI and said if they would all agree to search the underwear drawer of the former First Lady of the United States for secret documents, they could put an end to what some crazy lady in the corner was calling “this vast right-wing conspiracy.”

They all agreed and began talking about cocaine at the White House and how no one would ever know how those millions of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border got it there.

Needless to say, I woke up in a sweat on Nov. 6, glad that the long national nightmare was over. There was happiness in knowing that Trump had won and that to the victor go the spoils.

So, let’s not be fool enough to apologize to the losers or hold our heads down because some of Trump’s picks were not up to their standards. Their standards? Spare me. Let’s give the so-called expert class a well-earned sabbatical for all their failures and try something completely different. Don’t worry. Personnel can always be changed out if it isn’t working.

Maybe some people with some common sense and street smarts can make a difference. As Bill Buckley once said, “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”