Roger Ailes, dead at 77, grew up in Ohio before he helped four presidents take the White House. The former Fox News president was ousted for allegations of sexual harassment 10 months before he died.
Roger Ailes will always be remembered for his downfall, the way he was forced out as president of Fox News for sexually harassing the leggy and beautiful women he hired to take the channel to the top.
It was a shocking end to an extraordinary career for a man who helped four presidents take the White House and who for 20 years had pushed conservative causes on Rupert Murdoch’s network.
Ailes, who died early Thursday aged 77 just 10 months after he quit, was a larger than life figure who was idolized by conservatives and loathed by the left.
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He had been in a coma for eight days after hitting his head in a fall at the $36 million Oceanside mansion he had bought in Palm Beach, Florida just last year, said New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman, whose reporting had been instrumental in bringing down Ailes.
And the scandal that he was at the center of has continued to roil Fox News. Bill O’Reilly’s ouster last month after a host of women made similar claims against him was a direct result of the climate that Ailes fostered at the Fox headquarters on New York’s Sixth Avenue, as was the firing of Ailes’s successor Bill Shine.
But despite his fall from grace, both colleagues and rivals lauded him in the hours after his death
‘Today America lost one of its great patriotic warriors, ‘ said Fox’s Sean Hannity. ‘Few people in this life will ever reach the profound level of impact that Roger Ailes had on the country every single day. As his opponents played checkers in life, Roger was always the strategist, playing chess, [five] steps ahead at a whole other level.’
On the other side of the political divide, MSNBC’s Al Sharpton said he had known Ailes for 30 years. ‘We’ve fought, debated and exchanged war stories. We didn’t agree on much and I protested him many times, ‘ added Sharpton. ‘However his impact on US culture is undeniable.’
And Democratic strategist David Axelrod added: ‘I knew Ailes. Competed against him in campaigns. Railed against him many times. But appreciated our frank, backchannel conversations.’
Roger Ailes was a sickly child. Born on May 15,1940, he was the son of a factory maintenance foreman in Warren, Ohio. Throughout his early years he was in and out of hospital due to his hemophilia.
His father regularly beat him, but Ailes saw that as nothing out of the ordinary for the time.
Soon after graduating from the Warren G. Harding High School in 1958, he was kicked out of the family home. The young Roger thought it was another life lesson from his father, only later learning it was because his parents were about to divorce.
But he prospered, attending Ohio University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in radio and television in 1962.
He got his big break almost immediately out of college. He landed a job at The Mike Douglas Show, then a little black-and-white show airing just in Cleveland and Philadelphia. Within months it was picked up for national syndication.
In 1967, Richard Nixon was booked on the show and Ailes and the Republican politician got into an argument about the merits of television, which Nixon saw as a gimmick. Ailes was so impressive that the campaign hired him, charging him with the task of making the future president — who had famously bombed in his 1960 debate with John F. Kennedy — appear less stiff and more likeable.
From there he went on to two more Republican presidential campaigns, helping with Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984 and then steering George H. W. Bush to the White House four years later.
But he suffered a devastating blow when he tried to get former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania in a special election in 1991. Thornburgh was hot favorite but lost in an upset and immediately afterwards Ailes announced he was giving up political consulting for good.
He moved back to television, starting with the fledgling CNBC and when media mogul Rupert Murdoch wanted someone to head up his new Fox News cable channel in 1996, Ailes was a logical choice.
His views on what makes good TV were clear. ‘If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem, ‘ and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?’ he was fond of asking.
For 20 years Ailes built up the channel, turning it into a ratings machine. The conservative views that Fox promoted resonated with middle America making household names of hosts such as O’Reilly, Hannity and Glenn Beck.
But over the years Fox News was also gaining a reputation for the number of beautiful young women who were placed onscreen. Ailes was clear what he wanted and invariably dressed them in short skirts behind glass tables so viewers could see their shapely legs.
It was a stroke of genius as far as ratings were concerned and Fox soon overtook CNN as the leading cable TV network.
But it was those same women who were to bring down Ailes and later O’Reilly.
In 2014 Sherman alleged that Ailes offered one producer a raise if she would sleep with him. Fox hit back, angrily denying the allegation.
Then last July former host Gretchen Carlson learned her contract would not be renewed. She filed a lawsuit claiming she had been fired because she rebuffed her three-times married boss. ‘You and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better, ‘ Carlson claimed he had told her.
Again Fox was adamant the claims were made up.
Sherman then claimed at least six other women had made similar claims and within days Murdoch was forced to initiate an internal review.
Those inside Fox News were hardly surprised that Ailes was being accused. According to Vanity Fair, he frequently greeted his female employees by saying ‘Turn around and give me a spin.’
‘A step further was: ‘Does Rupert know you’re more than just a hot blonde, ‘ the magazine claimed. He also told a pregnant woman he knew about her condition in advance of her telling him. ‘You know how I could tell? Because your breasts look big.’
Just 15 days after Carlson first made her claim, Ailes was out. ‘I will not allow my presence to become a distraction from the work that must be done every day to ensure that Fox News and Fox Business continue to lead our industry, ‘ he said as he left the News Corps Building for the last time.
He walked away with a $40 million golden handshake.
