A Roger Ailes profile by Howie Kurtz in the Daily Beast has him offering advice to Mitt Romney ("You ought to be looser on the air") and warning Shepherd Smith not to say nice things about President Barack Obama ("Every once in a while [he] gets out there where the buses don't run and we have a friendly talk"). Kurtz reports that Ailes "has pulled back a bit on the throttle," but the evidence for that is scant.
Meanwhile, Ailes' latest criticism of the lamestream media is that (am I reading this correctly?) it's biased against suicide bombers:
The talk turns to terrorism. Ailes is angry about an Associated Press report that 29 worshipers were killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad’s largest Sunni mosque during prayers. 'How do we know they were worshiping?' he demands. 'I think the AP is so far over the hill, they’ve become left wing, antiwar. Gotta watch their copy.'
How do we know they were worshiping? What the hell does Ailes think Sunni Muslims do when they go to the mosque? Brush their teeth? And the phrase "during prayers" doesn't leave much room for ambiguity. I applaud Ailes' impulse to be judicious, but he should deploy it more constructively.