Election's done, so what now for Fox News?

Roger Ailes, Fox News

Remember the classic TV series "Car 54 Where Are You?" One of my favorite episodes had to do with a bunch of has-been criminals. They got caught in a heist attempt, served time and then decided to try the heist over again, minus any mistakes. They were too old. The guy who was supposed to jump over a wall couldn't do it. The guy who was supposed to lift the safe couldn't do it.

The humor might be a little politically incorrect today because of how it looks at older people.

I'm wondering how all the usual faces on Fox News can keep popping up. Their orchestrated carpet-bombing of everyone on "the left" doesn't seem to be working. We saw in the election that people are comfortable with government having an appreciable role in their lives. They don't see the big government boogeyman that tea partiers incessantly cite.

The tea party was mostly a mirage. It would have been on the fringe hardly warranting attention had it not been for Fox News. The Roger Ailes network doesn't just make points, it makes them around the clock. Television today is a 24/7 proposition. It's so different from when boomers like me were young, it's mind-boggling.

Just as the Internet in its early days invited snake oil salesmen, cable TV news invites the most cynical would-be manipulators.

We seem to be wising up. The electorate seemed pretty rational and reasonable on November 6. They weren't the herd of big government haters that Fox News had been nurturing and coaxing. The "you're on your own" philosophy lost.

So can the Ailes network perhaps adjust? Ideally it should be a solid and professional news network that presents labeled commentary from the right side of the political spectrum. That would make too much sense. It just wouldn't generate the ratings result.

A piece of commentary recently that got my attention asserted "the problem with Fox News isn't that it's partisan, it's that it's cynical."

What? People in the media business being cynical? I'm outraged to discover there's gambling in this joint (to awkwardly paraphrase the famous movie line).

Please remind yourself the media represent a business. Fox News doesn't exist to bring clarity to news or to encourage political discussion at the most refined and responsible level. Ailes is not some outlier who manages a business based on principle. Principle and ten cents can get you a cup of coffee.

Ailes looks at the numbers and beams when they look good vs. the other similar networks.

The better educated and more reasonable citizens don't need to be spoon-fed from a cynical TV network. It's the angry folks who shudder with fear about change in society who need Fox News, who are nurtured and emboldened by it.

What's dawning on me about Fox News now is how its "performing cast" has remarkably little turnover. Even "Car 54 Where Are You?" got canceled eventually. When us boomers were kids, TV shows were meteoric with few exceptions. Think we have a short attention span today? When we were kids, new TV shows were introduced regularly.

So why, when we turn on Fox News today, post-election, are we going to see most of the same tired faces and tired talk from an old cast of pontificators? These people are losers. They really did nothing to prop up the Republican party and may have damaged it by giving credence to too many of the "loons" in their ranks.

We are still seeing Herman Cain being interviewed. The line between interviewers and "guests" can seem blurred. The guests seem part of the act.

We saw the absolutely pathetic specter of John Sununu, Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani rant and rave. Ranting of this kind never passed muster with the august "network news" when I was a kid. A child's tantrum isn't to be taken seriously. Except that on Fox News it can find a platform. Sadly, other networks then feel they need to give at least some credence to it.

It is not written in stone that you must pick up the phone and arrange an interview with Sununu, Trump and Giuliani. Andrea Mitchell finally just couldn't take Sununu anymore. She blared one day that "I'll give you a chance to take that back," after the old George H.W. Bush colleague made a hurtful and empty assertion.

Sununu and Trump both seemed reasonable back when they first became well-known. Something about cable TV news has seemed to embolden them, to rip off their masks so we can see them as the doddering anachronisms they are. We may see less of them now.

The electorate has spoken and did not do so the way Dick Morris predicted. Morris might be the most cynical and bitter of the Fox News Vaudeville cast.

Can we now finally liken John Bolton and Karl Rove to those old, over the hill criminals from that charming "Car 54" show? My God, doesn't the conservative firmament have some young and fresh faces to come on the scene? Could it maybe try out some new personalities who are a little more temperate and capable of at least respecting their opponents more? There's too much disdain on Fox News. You can't help but conclude that some of this is racist. Racism gets beaten down in the end.

We might remember Sununu like we now remember Lester Maddox, OK like a "Lester Maddox Lite."

Subtle racism can be the most onerous kind. Trump is a total clown. Giuliani looks eccentric. Again I ask: Where are the younger faces that could start to get a platform and make more reasonable arguments?

Conservatives do have something to offer. We need their urge toward restraint sometimes. But they misfire when they come at us like a bat out of hell, pushing constitutional amendments at the state level that shouldn't see the light of day. They must come to accept abortion as settled law. They must proceed cautiously on the so-called "social issues" where the public's receptiveness is far less than they think.

There are a whole lot of people out there like me who think Jesse Ventura was on to something. Jim Graves was like that in his campaign. A huge tragedy in our election was Graves coming up just short of Michele Bachmann who is in with the worst of conservatives. I'm embarrassed for my old stomping ground of St. Cloud. I'm embarrassed for Minnesota.

Bachmann may have pulled another one out of the hat with her negative campaigning. Fox News can continue fawning over her.

Fox News does not reflect America. It's a lucrative media business that caters to its audience. It caters to paranoia and the unease among many about how America is changing.

Can the likes of Rove, Trump and Morris just move on now? Can Giuliani retire that sneering smile of his along with his provocative rhetoric, e.g. "Obama should resign!"

Maybe the younger conservatives are harnessing all the new media platforms in such a way that they don't need "TV" anymore. My generation was mesmerized by TV. We mustn't assume that primacy is still in effect or permanent. Fox News as a niche channel will hopefully fade in influence. Is it already happening? The election may have suggested "yes."

If Rove and his eccentric certainty about things still is on Fox News three years from now, it's possible relatively few people will care. He'll be like a member of that old gang of crooks on "Car 54," unable to cut it. He already looks that way, come to think of it. "Fox and Friends" will look like a paranoia fest. Greg Gutfeld will just seem like that irritating guy sitting two stools down at the bar.

I'd much rather watch re-runs of "Car 54 Where Are You?" with Fred Gwynne. Back when that series was made, an actor on a successful show would have a hard time walking away from that role. Gwynne also played Herman Munster but his costume and makeup disguised him. Eventually he played the old neighbor in the movie "Pet Sematary," remember? He was able to escape his old roles - a testament to his acting ability.

I'd vote for Herman Munster over Michele Bachmann. Maybe "Grandpa" (Al Lewis) too.

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com