'Loudest Voice' - Judging Roger Ailes with no sense of history

[Casino67]

Baltimore Sun:

By David Zurawik

The Baltimore Sun

2:09 PM EST, January 18, 2014

 

If you hate the extreme polarization of American life today, with more and more people talking to and living alongside only people who share their world view, blame Roger Ailes, president of Fox News.

 

If you are angry about the loss of civility, the coarsening of the conversation of democracy, the gridlock in Washington and the nastiness of political discourse, blame Ailes.

 

If you’re troubled by the widespread criticism of an American president like Barack Obama, yes, that, too, is the fault of Ailes — as is even the fact that your vote has been all but turned into Confederate dollars by the power of big-interest money and media manipulators.

 

That’s the real argument at the heart of “The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News — and Divided a Country,” by first-time author Gabriel Sherman, a New York magazine contributing editor.

 

If that kind of simplistic, historically and culturally ignorant explanation of contemporary American media and life works for you, then you will probably like this highly publicized biography from Random House just fine.

 

On the other hand, if you have had the pleasure of reading a meticulously researched, clearly written, scrupulously documented, even-handed and enlightening biography — like, say, the one Robert A. Caro is writing on Lyndon Johnson — Sherman’s book is going to be a major disappointment.