Ailes Calls Attempts to Blame Fox 'BS', Says He Instructed News Staff to 'Tone it Down'

Ailes to Fox Anchors, 'Tone it Down'
Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, on Monday embraced the idea of a more civil public discourse in the wake of the shootings in Arizona. In an interview with Russell Simmons, which was posted on the Web site of the founder of Def Jam records, Mr. Ailes said that his network would try to cool the heated Rhetoric. “I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually,” Mr. Ailes said. “You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other ...

Who has been "inflaming tensions"
Another rampantly biased piece in the Tribune this morning by Kathleen Hennessey and others. No mention of the Pima County Sheriff's inflammatory and unprofessional outburst. No mention of the contemptible bias of the NY Times and CNN, not to mention MSNBC--and even FoxNews. The LA Times/Tribune "reporters" conveniently cut off the quote from Roger Ailes: Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes — while rejecting any suggestion that his Cable News net...

The Giffords Blood Libel Will Fail
The big push to blame Conservatives for the murderous rampage of Jared Loughner won’t work. In fact, it will backfire. The Left is riding across quicksand on a horse that is dying beneath them. Here are some reasons why. The Right can fight back: The paramount reason this strategy will fail is that liberal media dominance is gone forever. The Politico offers a disgusting quote from a nameless Democrat operati...

Can't We All Just Get Along?
I would like to know what rock David Gergen has been living under for the last two years if he thinks this tragedy in Arizona is possibly just the beginning of a period of violence. Someone needs to tell him to go read our contributor Jon Perr's post if he actually hasn't been paying attention to how many people have already been killed over the last couple of years. We don't need to know "what part of that culture" of violence led to the actions by the shooter in Arizona to know that it's long ...

Poisonous Politics
On Feb. 15, 1933, Giuseppe Zangara, delusional and a loner, fired his .32-caliber pistol at FDR in the Bayfront Park area of Miami. Five feet tall, Zangara could not aim over the crowd. So, he stood on a folding chair and was piled on after the first of five shots. He wounded four people, including Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago. In two weeks, Zangara, who pled guilty, had been sentenced to 80 years. When Cermak died on March 6, Zangara was retried for Murder and sentenced to the electric chai...

The Tea Party and the Tucson Tragedy
How anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic Populism made the Giffords shooting more likely. By Jacob Weisberg Posted Monday, Jan. 10, 2011 There's something offensive, as well as pointless, about the politically charged inquiry into what might have been swirling inside the head of Jared Loughner. We hear that the accused shooter read The Communist Manifesto and liked flag-burning videos—good news for the right. Wait—he was a devotee of Ayn Rand and favored the gold standard, so he was a righ...

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes: Fox And 'The Other Side' Need To Tone Down Rhetoric
Fox News CEO Roger Ailes said that he has told his network to "tone it down" in the wake of the shooting in Arizona, and that he hopes the "other side" will do so as well. Ailes' comments appeared in a conversation with Russell Simmons that was published on Simmons' website, Global Grind. He said that any attempts to connect FOX News or the Tea Party to the shooting were "bullshit," and that "both sides" were responsible for extreme Rhetoric. But Ailes did say that he had issued a warning to F...

Ailes: Shooting blame 'bullshit', but Fox and left should 'tone it down'
Fox News President Roger Ailes denounced attempts to tie Gabrielle Giffords shooting to Fox News and the right, but said he had told "our guys [to] shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually" in an interview with the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons for Simmons's GlobalGrind.com. "He just was not attached to the Tea Party. It’s just a bullshit way to use the death of a little girl to get Fox News in an argument," Ailes said. "You know, they’re us...

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes: Fox And 'The Other Side' Need To Tone Down Rhetoric
Source: Huffington Post Fox News CEO Roger Ailes said that he has told his network to "tone it down" in the wake of the shooting in Arizona, and that he hopes the "other side" will do so as well. Ailes' comments appeared in a conversation with Russell Simmons that was published on Simmons' website, Global Grind. He said that any attempts to connect FOX News or the Tea Party to the shooting were "bullshit," and that "both sides" were responsible for extreme Rhetoric. But Ailes did say that he had...

Snippets of Revelation.
Snippets of Revelation by digby Anderson Cooper interviewed Bill Maher tonight, playing Devil's Advocate to Maher's strong denunciation of Right Wing violence. It's worth watching on the rerun if you care to. This was a highlight: Cooper: I'm reading biographies of Lincoln and Jefferson and Lincoln had horrible things said about him when he was president, really vicious, vicious stuff. Maher: Sure, and look what happened to him. Cooper: well... Maher: yeah, and we saw how that ended. I guess ...

Video: Debating extremist rhetoric on Al-Jazeera
Yesterday I made my first appearance on Al-Jazeera’s English-language channel to discuss the Tucson massacre and the attempt to pin the blame on Sarah Palin and the “heated Rhetoric, particularly from those on the Right and the Far Right,” as the host put it. He presses repeatedly on this point, while I point out that there is absolutely no evidence that the shooter had any connection to the “Right,” or any other rational political movement. When he asks why we sh...

The left stoops to new low with Arizona shooting
Despite the fact that the alleged shooter in Saturday’s massacre in Tucson appears to have no particular Party Affiliation, and police have found the Communist Manifesto and some sort of crude alter complete with skull and candles in Jared Loughner’s backyard…the leftwing media continues to blame this horrific event on the likes of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. The liberal blame game began shortly after Loughner was taken into Custody, with Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik&...

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes: Ive Told All Our Guys, Shut Up, Tone It Down
Fox News CEO Roger Ailes says he put the word out at Fox to “tone it down” and make arguments “intellectually” with less heated Rhetoric. “You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that.” But Ailes draws the line at any suggestion the passion of Fox News hosts had anything to do with the Shooting Spree in Arizona that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded: “That is just bullsh-,” he told Ru...

Roger Ailes: Tone it down
Roger Ailes spoke to Russell Simmons about how the media was painting the shootings in Arizona, noting that both sides were guilty of violent Rhetoric, but agreeing that it was important for both sides to tone it down. You know, they’re using this thing...apparently there was a map from one of Palin’s things that had her (Congresswoman Giffords) targeted district. So, we looked at the Internet and the first thing we found in 2007, the Democrat Party had a targeted map with targets ...

Fox News Head Tells Hosts 'Shut Up, Tone It Down' After Giffords Shooting
Roger Ailes, the conservative who heads the Fox News Channel, has told his traditionally outspoken hosts to "shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually" in the wake of the massacre in Tuscon that is putting overheated right-wing Rhetoric under intense scrutiny. After the Arizona Massacre, Will Congress Ever Be the Same? "I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually," Ailes said in an interview with Russell Simmons, the global hip-hop impresario, ...

Ariz. survivor: 'It was like a bad crime drama'
Eric Fuller said Tuesday on the CBS "The Early Show" that he felt the bullet that hit his knee but didn't know he had also been hit in the back. Jared Loughner (LAWF'-nuhr) is being held on federal charges. He's accused of killing six people and wounding or injuring 14 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Fuller says he was lucky and feels fine physically but is outraged that Giffords was attacked. Ariz. survivor: 'It was like a bad crime drama' Why hasn't Obama warned...

Simmons and Ailes discuss taking things down a notch
Yeas & Nays told you on Monday that hip-hop media mogul Russel Simmons is coming to D.C. on Friday to promote his new book "Super Rich: A Guide To Having It All," but it turns out Simmons isn't just touting his book -- he's getting political and playing Journalist too. After Saturday's tragic shooting in Tucson, Ariz., "Super Rich" Russ talked with Fox News President Roger Ailes about tensions in America and the need to "tone down left- and right-wing arguments" in an exclusive interview for...

Stop the Blame Game
I'm not a media critic and never will be, but this has not been a shining 48 hours for my profession. Following the shooting that left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., gravely wounded and six bystanders murdered at a Tucson shopping center, the media have spent as much time trying to assign political blame for the cause of the shooting as they have trying to unearth facts. As it turns out, the murderer is a mentally unstable individual, with no coherent political ideology. For all the blame pl...

Pawlenty defends Palin but differs on crosshairs map
Washington (CNN) - Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Monday he would not have used a map with crosshairs to target Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and other Democrats during the Midterm Elections, but otherwise defended Sarah Palin from suggestions that her graphic may have influenced the man behind last weekend's Shooting Spree in Arizona. "It's not a device I would have chosen to do. Everyone has their style and their own choices," Pawlenty told the New York Times when asked about the map. "But I don't...

About Tucson: Stupid people and crazy people may not know they are, but dishonest people sure do
According to today's Borowitz Report (see below), "Calls for a reduction in violent political Rhetoric have plunged the Fox News Channel into chaos, with a Fox spokesperson warning today that such a move 'would leave us with 24 hours to fill.'” by Ken I thought Paul Krugman said what needed to be said about the political climate that made Tucson ineviteable very well indeed in the NYT column today, "Climate of Hate," from which Howie quoted extensively this morning. As a footnote, I'd like t...

WikiLeaks: Don't Call for Our Murder, Either
There have been many public calls to assassinate Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, Fox News Chief Roger Ailes, Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer and Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander have all called for calmer, saner Rhetoric out of politicians and pundits in the wake of the assasination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the Murder of six individuals. The alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, has been described as a lone, mentally disturbed gunman. WikiLeaks fou...

Early Morning Swim: Sherrod Brown and Rachel Maddow Discuss Violence in Our Politics
Meanwhile, God bless Sheriff Dupnik. The Arizona sheriff investigating the Tucson shooting that left U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded had harsh words today for those engaging in political Rhetoric, calling conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh “irresponsible” for continuing the vitriol. “The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information,” Pima County Sh...

Poll: Only 32% Of Americans Think Tucson Shooter Was Politically Motivated
Despite a 48 hour campaign by Demcorats and their surrogates in the media to pain the Tucson shooter Jarred Loughner as a tea-partying Sarah Palin devotee, most of the public isn’t buying it. Even a plurality of Democrats are saying that the shooting had nothing to do with politics: Nearly six in 10 Americans say the country’s heated political Rhetoric is not to blame for the Tucson shooting rampage that left six dead and critically wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, according to ...

That’s Political Entertainment!
EMOTE CONTROL Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck. In Morning Glory, last year’s most underrated movie comedy, go-getter breakfast-show producer Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams, divine), in a burst of exasperation, explains the facts of life to journalistic warhorse Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford, face furrowed with mental indigestion): “The world has been debating news versus entertainment for years, and guess what? You lost!” Which hasn’t stopped the l...

Hate Speech the Rights Magic Bullet (Guest Voice)
Hate Speech the Right’s Magic Bullet by Michael Winship The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov had a rule: if you show a gun in the first act, by the time the curtain falls, it has to go off. For weeks and months, that gun, the weapon of angry Rhetoric and intemperate rabblerousing, has been cocked and loaded in plain view on the American stage; Saturday morning outside a Shopping Mall in Tucson, Arizona, it went off again and again and again. The target, Gabrielle Giffords, a member of the Un...