Fox News Unfiltered

After spending weeks looking into Fox News, I have plenty of material in my notebook that never made it into this week’s Newsweek piece. Here is just a sampling:

Sayings of Chairman Roger:

Roger Ailes on his ideology: “If I were to become a liberal, I’d be the toast of this country.”

On Obama’s funding of shovel-ready projects: “It’d be helpful if the president had ever picked up a shovel. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” (Ailes dug ditches as a teenager.)

Asking his staff about a possible future guest: “Can we book Al Gore? Did you see him the other night? He seems angry. We need to have Keith Ablow talk to him.” (Ablow is Fox’s on-air psychiatrist.)

On hiring White House correspondent Ed Henry from CNN: “The White House somehow thought he’d had a frontal lobotomy and now that he’s working for Fox he’s therefore a totally different human being. He’s the same guy.”

On criticism by bloggers: “The second some jerkoff hits a computer key, he thinks he’s a journalist. These clowns put out stuff every day to damage people.”

On hearing that Columbia University students might attend a dinner (which was later canceled) with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “I frankly don’t give a fuck what a mass murderer thinks. I think he should be whacked.”

Bill O’Reilly on putting together his show: “I’m not real interested in policy on this program any more. We used to do that, but it just didn’t resonate. Policy is very complicated, and TV just doesn’t have the time.”

On his on-air style: “Once in awhile we’ll have an explosion, we’ll have a pie fight. You become a caricature if you do it all the time.”

Megyn Kelly on the reaction of her mother, a lifelong Democrat, when she joined Fox: “My mom believed the same things about Fox that many of our non-viewers do: ‘Isn’t that a right-leaning network?’”

Kelly on the e-mail she gets when she grills a conservative guest: “I always knew you were a lefty. Go work for MSNBC!”

Bret Baier and Chris Wallace were on stage at a rehearsal for the Fox News/Google debate in Orlando when Baier checked his smartphone:

Baier: “You know what’s great? Getting a Google alert at a Google event.”

Wallace seemed puzzled. Baier was Googling himself?

Baier: “You don’t do that? Get with the times. It lists all the stories that include your name.”

Wallace: “That’s cool.” But he showed no interest in adopting the practice.