On the rather surreal occasion of the opening of something solemnly called the George W. Bush “Library,” I was inexorably drawn not to my personal Bush Library of 92 infuriating volumes, but the somewhat smaller 60 or so in the Nixon section.  As I listened to snippets of Village homilies and President Obama predictably joshing chummily about the “clubhouse,”  I was reminded of Jonathan Schell’s masterful recounting of the Watergate era, The Time of Illusion. 

FoxNews is dispensing it’s top-notch “Fox Security” on the trail of the alleged insider that Gawker has retained. So far, this has been done as successfully as Roger Ailes did on the South Beach Diet.

It’s not a pattern, it’s a way of life for FoxNews.

Watching the fall of Rupert Murdoch play itself out has brought back old, old memories. Memories of the only political scandal I’ve experienced in my homeland that comes even close to what’s been unfolding in the UK right now: Watergate. And to judge from this British piece and this Canadian one, I’m not the only person to be thinking of Watergate in connection with all of this.

Now that the head of Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid and the head of his American business daily flagship have both resigned, with the titian-haired one under arrest in Britain, is it time to look at the man GHWBush calls “our man Ailes” and his techniques that FOX News Channel may have used to make the news?

Roger Ailes — that’s some good schadenfreude.

Whoo boy. Think back to how loudly the mighty wurlitzer argued that Scooter Libby should not be indicted for lying. And imagine how much louder it will be if Roger Ailes–a cornerstone of Republican success–were indicted for telling Judith Regan to do the same?

FoxNews and big settlement checks, it’s the price of power and wankery I guess.

There have been a lot of attempts at false equivalencies (the last Republican Vice Presidential candidate of the United States is exactly the same as a random Daily Kos diarist) and a lot of attempts to explain away incendiary political rhetoric with a wave of the hand and something like “both sides do it.” But the responses above on their own refute this. They resort to the pretty common rhetoric of demonization to make their points. I have no interest in censoring their speech, but I sure want to highlight it.

I have no idea why Jabba the Ailes decided to appear on “This Week” — but after this beatdown by Krugman, I doubt he’ll be back.