Roger Ailes on Arianna Huffington's Paranoia Hypocrisy: 'You Ever Read Her Website?'

Define hypocrisy: Arianna Huffington claiming that Fox News President Roger Ailes plays off of Americans' fear and paranoia.

Indeed, while Huffington Post columnists call American political leaders criminals, terrorists, and Nazis and occasionally fantasize about their deaths, Huffington has the gall to claim, "If you’re looking for the usual flame-throwing, name-calling, and simplistic attack dog rhetoric....don’t bother coming to The Huffington Post." She then turns around and criticizes Ailes for appealing to paranoia. Unbelievable.

But Ailes has never been one to shrink from a fight. He noted Huffington's arrant hypocrisy on Monday's segment of "Uncommon Knowledge", a webshow produced by National Review Online (video and transript below the fold - relevant portion begins at 0:52):

PETER ROBINSON, HOST: Recently on the ABC show This Week, Arianna Huffington referred to the famous essay by historian Richard Hofstadter entitled "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." And then she looked at you.

AILES: [laughing] Yeah.

ROBINSON: Your reply?

AILES: You ever read her website? I mean you want to talk about paranoia? It's--she's got her own gimmick going. I didn't tell her I enjoyed her on Green Acres but I was tempted to.

Short, funny, and hard-hitting.

Of course Ailes did not need to say much--the paranoid style is quite evident at HuffPo. One need only browse through the site's homepage to find some lefty screed about evil Republicans and such.

Why, as I write this, the site is providing a platform for Michael Moore's apocalyptic, socialist soothsaying in an article headlined "Michael Moore: There's Going to be a Second Crash (And Glenn Beck Can F--k Off)". Nothing to see here, people. Move along.

The 2007 MRC report Huffington's House of Horrors documents a host of other statements rife with paranoia and hate. One columnists said former White House press secretary Tony Snow deserved cancer, and another said "we" would be a "cum stain on the flag" if we didn't impeach Bush. As NBer Tim Graham noted, "All of these articles were chosen, not merely allowed."

In fairness, Huffington seems supremely qualified to provide commentary on the "paranoid style". She's done as much as anyone to advance it.