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Have Fox News and Roger Ailes Goofed?
...I have come to believe that the nearly daily back and forth between the White House and Fox News is good for both sides. I have further come to believe it’s good for the political class in general. For one thing, the fight is deeply self-referential and true inside baseball (who is doing what to whom on the basis of what strategy and what future benefit); for another it sets up the ultimate liberal-conservative face-off. In one corner the new young president (with all his promises of bipartisanship) and in the other Fox Chief Roger Ailes, that dark figure who has been bending media to the conservative cause since the Nixon administration....

...I wonder now if that game is subtly changing. The White House wants us to believe they are standing up to Fox’s bullying—and they are. But what they are also doing is playing the Fox game: The White House’s pretend sanctimony is like Fox’s pretend sanctimony; it’s all for the show of it, everybody’s a big ham, everybody’s playing everybody else....