The News Cycle

My wife and I ended our holiday movie-going with Bombshell. For those of you who may have missed it, and the box office receipts suggest that may be a vast majority of those attending the cinema over the past couple of weeks, Bombshell tells the story of the decline and fall of Roger Ailes via sexual harassment. Among his targets were Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, played by Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman. John Lithgow plays Roger Ailes. Three Academy Award winning actors. Why aren't people flocking to this film?
Well, a couple of reasons: The most obvious being the automatic elimination of any and all Fox News viewers. I would imagine they would have an adverse reaction that would not be characterized as either fair of balanced. Those who do not habituate Fox News, the argument could easily made, while standing outside the ticket kiosk, that there is enough sadness in the world with much of it pouring out into the living room every evening. Why plunk down thirteen dollars for reruns of that experience when Star Wars is playing on the big screen? And the one that came to mind while I was in the theater, taking in all that tawdry business, "Am I really in a place where I can be sympathetic to Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly?"
My answer was, eventually, "Yes." I may not agree with these women's politics, but they are human beings and should not be subject to the pandering and salacious slobbering by their boss. Or the public at large. This set off an alarm in my head that recalled my somewhat antiquated concern about the fact that men tend to dress as if they were attending a business meeting to deliver the news, while women are dressed as if they were serving cocktails. Which in turn makes me feel even more about cocktail waitresses. Which is a great big kettle of fish that brought me back to the present, where I was being sold a movie about women on Fox News being objectified. "Television is a visual medium," is the refrain heard from Roger Ailes as the movie recounts the sordid details of his "meetings" with these women.
Somewhat lost in the shuffle here is the fact that all of this took place concurrently with the eventual election of one Donald J. Trump, the man who responded without apology to Ms. Kelly's questioning of his treatment of women during a 2015 debate she moderated. He did what he has done for his entire political career, and for his life before that: He doubled down. Tripled. And so on. He made her the issue and ended up making it difficult if not impossible to continue doing her job at Fox News. And yes, as a viewer, I was able to piece these threads together as I watched the film, but I found myself once again in that uncanny valley of "how can other people, especially women, not see this for exactly what it is?"
So, when Roger Ailes was fired and ended up with a severance package that rivaled the amount paid to all his victims in compensation. Fox News is still on the air. Donald Trump is still "president." And television is still a visual medium.
Yeesh.