Fox News Makes Its Fortune On Bikinis And Bros

Fox News is about more than just pseudo-populist resentment. It’s also about boobs, and bro-tastic guys who chuckle like adolescents when confronted with them. Just look at this mashup culled from the past few months.

How many people who decry Fox News actually take one for the team and watch it regularly? Luckily, Media Matters is on it. Our favorite part is when the guy is earnestly talking about drug cartel murders while Fox won’t cut away from bikini-clad spring breakers frolicking in the water. NYU’s Jay Rosen has described the selling point as being “more blondes per square foot.”

This is a deliberate strategy. There’s a point in the recent Esquire profile
of Fox News chairman Roger Ailes where he stands before his (male) interviewer and an array of television screens turned to cable news.

Then he said: “Look at all those screens. Where does your eye go?”

You really want to know the truth, Mr. Ailes?

We don’t know about you, but Esquire’s eye goes to the screen featuring your creamy redhead, Jenna Lee.

Sure, that’s a Fox screen, and so you win again. But – if you don’t mind our saying so – it didn’t exactly require an advanced degree in TV geniusology to see the potential of Ms. Jenna Lee.

Wait – it did? “Well, she didn’t look anything like she looks now when she came here. She’d just completed Columbia journalism school, and she wanted to be a writer. But I met with her and sent her down to hair and makeup to clean her up a little. When she came back, I took a look at her and said, ‘What would you think of going on air?’ I had to work with her a little to bring her pitch down, and now she’s going to be a big star. And she wanted to be a writer.”

It’s like one of those magical makeover movie sequences. Thank you, Roger Ailes! He suggests to the writer that this is not about sexiness, it’s about authenticity. So that’s why they all come out of the process looking the same! Jenna Lee should be grateful the existence of a redhead fetish prevented her from having to go blonde.

In any case, this is from the network that suggested viewers DVR Glenn Beck in order to get laid. And in the above video, where there aren’t actual scenes of bared flesh with zero relevance to the story at hand, there are guys making slobbery comments and practically slapping each other five, as the women around pout or giggle. Real American values, folks.