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Fox News Tag

It appears that Fox News will not give in to the David Hogg, Media Matters and #TheResistance driven faux outrage over Laura Ingraham's mild rebuke of Hogg as someone who "whines." That faux outrage has been used to intimidate advertisers into fleeing Ingraham's highly-rated program. Fox News co-President Jack Abernathy just released this statement (via L.A. Times):

There is an all out assault in progress trying to drive Laura Ingraham off television and radio, led by Parkland student and newly-minted media star David Hogg. Ingraham is a target, superficially, because she mocked Hogg as a whiner in a tweet after he publicly griped that several colleges had rejected him. On the scale of internet insults, saying that someone is "whining" doesn't even register it's so mild.

KISS frontman Gene Simmons has been a regular at Fox News for the past years, but after his antics this week, that will change. The Daily Beast reported that the network confirmed it has banned Simmons from the premises for life:
Fox finally had enough of Simmons after he crudely insulted female Fox staffers, taunted them and exposed his chest, and otherwise behaved like the “demon” character he plays onstage. Management was not amused, and Simmons’s photograph was promptly posted Wednesday at the security entrance of the company’s Manhattan headquarters along with a “do-not-admit” advisory.

Don't think for a second that the attack on Sean Hannity's advertiser's led by Media Matters has anything to do with Hannity's coverage of or interview with Roy Moore. The Moore coverage is just a pretext to carry out a plan to attack conservative media, Fox News and Hannity that has been a Media Matters project for many years, led by Angelo Carusone. The plan was hatched years ago, as we wrote about in 2011, Media Matters Plans “Guerrilla Warfare and Sabotage” on Fox News And Conservative Websites.

Megyn Kelly's daytime talk show is not doing well. At all. We've covered some of the train wreck here. In what looks like a sad attempt to give her ratings a desperately needed bump, Kelly used the beginning of Monday's show to claim she complained about now former Fox News host, Bill O'Reilly's behavior while both were still employed by the network. O'Reilly was fired months ago over sexual harassment allegations.

Eric Bolling, Sr. was, as we recently noted, dropped from the Fox News network. Tragically, his 19-year-old son has been found dead, presumably a suicide. TMZ reports:
The son of former Fox News Channel anchor Eric Bolling has committed suicide, TMZ reports. Sources told the website that 19-year-old Eric Chase Bolling, Jr., took his life Friday night. The news comes just one day after FNC announced the network had “parted ways” with Bolling amid allegations that he had sent lewd photos to co-workers.
We don't yet know what prompted this young man to end his life.  Eric, Jr. was the only child of Eric Bolling, Sr. and his wife Adrienne.

Eric Bolling started at FOX covering business news but quickly climbed the ladder of success, first as a guest host on the O'Reilly Factor and then to the center chair on The Five. This year, he was given his own show called the FOX News Specialists. Now it's all over. We covered the controversy in two earlier posts: Friday it was announced that the network decided to part ways with Bolling.

What in the world is going on at the FOX News channel? In the past year, Megan Kelly and Greta Van Susteren left the network. Roger Ailes was forced out and Bill O'Reilly left when it looked like he was going to face an investigation. Eric Bolling has now been suspended over an allegation that he sent lewd text messages.

Now former Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Jason Chaffetz shocked many when he abruptly announced he'd be quitting Congress before the end of his term. In a recent interview, Chaffetz insisted his decision was personal, that he was disappointed by the state of politics, and that he and his wife made the decision together for personal reasons. Chaffetz alluded to living on a tight budget, but only this week did he confirm money played a role in the decision-making process.

Roger Ailes, who founded and built news powerhouse Fox News, died today at the age of 77. No one has released a cause of death. His wife released this statement via CNBC:
In a statement to Drudge Report, his wife Elizabeth Ailes said, "I am profoundly sad and heartbroken to report that my husband, Roger Ailes, passed away this morning. Roger was a loving husband to me, to his son Zachary, and a loyal friend to many. He was also a patriot, profoundly grateful to live in a country that gave him so much opportunity to work hard, to rise—and to give back. During a career that stretched over more than five decades, his work in entertainment, in politics, and in news affected the lives of many millions. And so even as we mourn his death, we celebrate his life..."

On his Fox News show last night, Tucker Carlson ripped Mika Brzezinski for quoting, on yesterday's Morning Joe, unflattering things that Kellyanne Conway allegedly said about Donald Trump in private, off-the-air conversations. Tucker cited Mika as an example of journalists who have "degraded and humiliated themselves" out of their anti-Trump "hysteria." Tucker: "TV anchors almost never reveal what their guests have said off-camera, and for good reason. People come to TV studios so they can speak on TV. They do not come with the expectation that their private conversations will wind up broadcast to the country."

During today's Morning Joe discussion of the ouster of Bill O'Reilly at Fox News, Joe Scarborough asked, "Do they remake over the entire network? Is anybody else in the [Murdoch] family's crosshairs right now?" Replied New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters: "I think you have to look at somebody like Sean Hannity, and question whether or not his almost propaganda-like attitude and programming every night is going to be acceptable in the minds of the family, which is clearly trying to shift the network in a different direction."