Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes

This man was a piece of garbage. It doesn't matter what his political leanings were, although they were based in paranoia and ignorance. He was creative enough, and knew people well enough, to manipulate them. Fox News is based on fear. It's based on a yearning for something in the past that never was. This man created it. And now we have this documentary.

Pretty basic Roger Ailes documentary largely focused on his quirks and weird right-wing ideas. As most of this stuff on Roger Ailes it makes him out to be that crazy guy with some genius ideas about how to entice conservatives. So not quite evil nor great. But he is important.

It's a good doc for sure. It's just not really a topic or person I'm that fascinated by. Roger Ailes to me just seems a bit too biased to be a great man. The doc is negative, as predicted, but not over the top initially. At the end it goes into some nasty theories about Fox News STILL being a place of sexual harassment, but that's just mentioned as a proposed guess with zero proof whatsoever. This is after we learned that Rupert Murdoch kicked out Ailes just 2-3 days after finding out there were some fairly legit sexual harassment cases. There was clearly a zero tolerance policy on this from the top and they reacted swiftly. They even initially hired a law firm to carefully investigate all claims and interview a ton of women in the company just to see if the first story from Gretchen Carlson was valid. But then most American docs have this "doomsday" style to them where they exaggerate things somewhat just like Fox News itself did 10 years ago. Still, what I have learned from these docs on bad Republican people is that they are often fairly neutral because most are produced by progressives and Democrats and they already have the story they need so they don't need to invent new rumors. In this case they can just retell the story truthfully. At the end they just have a need to take a jab at Fox News itself as they largely don't hate Roger Ailes anymore. He used to be that "evil guy" in left-wing media. Now they admit he was just that crazy old guy and not some super evil psychopath. I guess biographical docs need to be made after a person has died.

Overall it's quite fine. A critical looks at Roger Ailes. But frankly I think it would be way better if it was about Fox News and how it started and came about. That would be fascinating. Seeing all the shows being created. Looking into the drama. Seeing what aired when and what interviews they did. The interesting story is the one behind the scenes here. Roger Ailes is not Fox News. Fox News today is a very changed news network. Rupert Murdoch's sons are not conservative so they don't like his media companies that they are about to inherit and to a large degree already run. Their plan is to shut down Fox News or sell it. Or maybe push it more to the left still. It has become a news channel with way more varied opinions yet it's still clearly right-wing.

Fantastic documentary about the horrible life of mega-troll Ailes. His poor wife.. so many sexual assault and rape lawsuit settlements, which led to FAUX.. errr.. Fox News firing him and his death soon after. Ailes was one of the worst humans this country has ever seen. Pure evil. His bloated, obese body reflected the ugliness inside. What a sad, tragic, insecure man. The world is a better place without him in it.

As more people see this great documentary, the rating will most certainly go up and be closer to the excellent critical reviews this doc has received. If you want to know the genisis for our currently polarized country, it all begins with one man - Roger Ailes. We went from simply disagreeing with each other on political matters to hating each other simply because we have a difference of opinion. This doc shows how Ailes basically created the landscape for the horrible condition of our current political discourse. The doc also shows how Ailes treated women like property he could use and abuse and discard at will. A must-see documentary if there ever was one.

If only this kind of behavior was behind us and finally relegated to history. His father did the damage and Roger took it out on Americans and especially women. This movie demonstrates how gullible a large part of our populace has become. How sad that men in power have led people to become so hateful towards others. Watching, I remembered how the women had to fight to be understood. The legal system did a lot to shield a lot of those evil men.