R.I.P. Roger

Roger Ailes, the man who built Fox News into a right-wing juggernaut and who was as responsible as anyone for the information divide that now paralyzes the nation, has died. I suppose I should have some sympathy for the human being, but it’s hard for me to conjure anything but contempt for the man. He was a serial abuser — of women — and of truth. His most enduring legacy is the world of alternative facts in which Americans can no longer agree even on things that are provably true or false. I now have friends who routinely put more faith in some unattributed lie they got off the internet than in the carefully researched and vetted news from the New York Times.

In the newspaper business we were always careful to wait a few days after the death of someone we despised before using their demise as a chance to express our unflattering opinion about the deceased.. I don’t work for a newspaper anymore.