Right Wing

Retaining Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader would damage the political future of the Republican Party, according to public relations experts interviewed by Matt Stearns.

There's something "incredibly creepy" about Fox TV mogul Roger Ailes, writes Michael Wolff: "He looks the way you imagine the man behind the curtain looking: That is, he doesn't care about how he looks (which is, as it happens, gray and corpulent). He understands it's all manipulation." Wolff examines the techniques that Ailes has used to turn his right-wing network into a ratings phenomenon: "Fox is not really about politics (CNN, with its antiseptic beltway p.o.v., is arguably more about politics than Fox). It certainly isn't arguing a consistent right-wing case.

"Some of the United States' best-heeled corporations and capitalists, seeking to elect a Republican Congress in November, have turned to a gambit pioneered nearly 70 years ago by rulers of the Soviet Union," Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly writes. "The underlying reason: Sheep's clothing is often needed for wolves to stalk their prey." With elections drawing near, industry-sponsored front groups are flooding the air waves with their anonymous messages. The drug company sponsored United Seniors Association spent more than $1 million to boost embattled Rep.

"This month marks the end of one of the most successful and respected conservative PR teams in Washington, as Herb Berkowitz and Hugh Newton retire from the Heritage Foundation," PR Week writes. "Heritage, a conservative think tank founded 25 years ago, became one of the foremost purveyors of right-wing public policy in Washington with Berkowitz and Newton at the PR helm. The two are credited with helping win credibility for conservative ideals among often-hostile liberal journalists in Washington."