Election Night on FOX, Rove Ranted & the Network Pimped Megyn Kelly

As if more proof were needed, this Gabriel Sherman report in NY magazine, tipped to me by TPM, shows how intertwined FOX News continues to be with the Repub establishment. On Tuesday night, after FOX, following the same decision by other networks, called Ohio for President Obama, there was a meltdown on the right, culminating in Karl Rove’s rant on camera, when he sounded like a spoiled child who wanted his toys back:

“Instantly, FOX phones lit up with angry phone calls and e-mails from the Romney campaign, who believed that the call was premature, since tallies in several Republican-leaning Southern counties hadn’t been been fully tabulated. ‘The Romney people were totally screaming that we’re totally wrong,’ one FOX source said. ‘To various people, they were saying, ‘your decision team is wrong.’ According to a FOX insider, Rove had been in contact with the Romney people all night. After the Ohio call, Rove—whose super-PAC had spent as much as $300 million on the election, to little avail—took their complaints public, conducting an on-air primer on Ohio’s electoral math in disputing the call.

I guess phone numbers of FOX senior producers is something Repub operatives are given when they get hired.

Sherman’s story also makes clear how willing FOX is to dangle and pimp their on-air female talent before male viewers.  In an impromptu episode that followed Rove’s refusal to accept the Ohio call for Obama, FOX producers sent host Megyn Kelly on a bizarre expedition down the hall to conduct an interview with the experts staffing the network’s election decision desk. Sherman reports that,

“One idea was for two members of the decision team, Mishkin and Fox’s digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt, to go on camera with Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier to squelch the doubts over the call. But then it was decided that Kelly would walk through the office and interview the decision team in the conference room. ‘This is Fox News,’ an insider said, ‘so anytime there’s a chance to show off Megyn Kelly’s legs they’ll go for it.’ The decision desk were given a three-minute warning that Kelly would be showing up.”

This isn’t a network, it’s a burlesque show.