Frank Rich: Preview of Roger Ailes bio not 'bursting with news

Frank Rich, formerly with the New York Times and now with New York magazine, greeted an excerpt of a new biography on Fox News CEO Roger Ailes with a yawn.

The excerpt, featured in Vanity Fair, contained quotes by Ailes calling Newt Gingrich "a prick," President Obama "lazy," and Vice President Joe Biden "dumb as an ashtray."

In an interview with his own publication, Rich said...

If the insults in the Vanity Fair excerpt are the best the book can offer — and excerpts of books like this usually do cherry-pick highlights — it doesn’t seem to be bursting with news. It’s all been heard many times on Fox News except for the Gingrich putdown, and it’s hardly a stop-the-presses revelation that even conservatives regard Newt as “a prick.” That said, Ailes is a fascinating figure, and for now the best account of him can be found in Joe McGinniss’s behind-the-scenes classic The Selling of the President 1968, in which we meet the young Ailes taking on the seemingly impossible task of humanizing Richard Nixon for public consumption and miraculously pulling it off.

The book, titled Roger Ailes: Off Camera, is set for release Mar. 19. A competing book written by Gabriel Sherman, who also works at New York magazine, is scheduled for publication later this year. It is also a biography of Ailes but unlike Off Camera, Ailes did not agree to participate in it.

@eScarry