Simpsons on Fox Hunt

Simpsons News — Posted 08 Dec, 2004 by MrBurns

If you want to make Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes go ballistic - and I wouldn't advise it - just suggest that his broadcast journalists are shills for President Bush and the Republicans.

Ailes, who in a past life was a media strategist for Richard Nixon and George Bush the elder, has transformed his formerly brass-knuckled, partisan persona into that of a "fair and balanced" cable-news czar.

So he couldn't have been happy Sunday night when another member of the Fox television family - "The Simpsons" - featured a Fox News satellite truck sporting a huge Bush-Cheney bumper sticker while the rock group Queen's classic "We Are the Champions" blared over the soundtrack. Continue...

Ailes didn't return my phone call yesterday.

But my pal Tom Shales, the esteemed television critic of The Washington Post, E-mailed that the wicked sendup was "pretty ballsy since 'The Simpsons' plays on the Fox network, but it also shows how firm is the image of Fox News as Bush whores."

"Simpsons" executive producer Al Jean responded: "Shales said that, not me."

Jean noted that Fox News has been an occasional "Simpsons" target, "but the only trouble we got into this time was with the broadcast standards and practices department, which told us we couldn't air it prior to the election because then it would present an 'equal time' problem."

The network's ethics cops simmered down when Jean assured them that the Bush-Cheney joke was for after the election.

Meanwhile, a Fox News spokeswoman insisted: "We're flattered by the attention."

Source: New York Daily News