MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2025
CEO sends in the clowns: Among the indigenous people of her Parsippany demographic, her ancestral name is well known:
By contemporary norms, it's an unusual name. Here it is:
Sends in The Clowns.
Within the American corporate realm, she's addressed by her little-known business moniker. Last Friday, we heard someone say that name on the Fox News Channel, we think for the very first time.
Indeed, the person to whom we refer said her name right out loud!
On that day's edition of The Five, the indefatigable Jessica Tarlov was trying to reason with the irate and inane, yet loud and insistent Greg Gutfeld. Rolling the rock up the hill once again, wearily, Tarlov explained:
The First Amendment's guarantee of "freedom of speech" doesn't mean that a person can't be fired by a private employer.
So the punching-bag wearily said. It was during this attempt at conducting a conversation that we heard her say her name.
For the record, Sends in The Clowns sends in Greg Gutfeld two separate times each weekday. At 5 p.m., she sends him in to discuss (imagined) celebrity colonoscopies on The Five
Five hours later, at 10 p.m., she sends him in to serve as the host of his own eponymous prime-time program. On that show, he specializes in comparisons of liberal women to horses, cows, pigs, "livestock," elephants, whales.
In such ways, a failing nation is edified, all thanks to Sends in The Clowns.
On last Friday's The Five, to our surprise, Tarlov said her name! We join this program's imitation of human life in progress:
GUTFELD (10/3/25): You can get fired over saying stupid stuff! God knows, I know!
TARLOV: Donald Trump—
GUTFELD: I know—I've been fired three times! So— Sorry, I, um—
TARLOV: The government cannot go after you. That's what the First Amendment is about. It's not about private enterprise, or Suzanne decides she doesn't like what you're saying. It's about if Donald Trump—
At that point, Kayleigh McEnany broke in, interrupted—cut Tarlov off. Due to her overtalking, we aren't quite sure, but as best we can tell, she said this, perhaps whimsically:
MCENANY (continuing directly): OK, Suzanne wants Greg to talk now. Go ahead.
Gutfeld extended the charade from there. But we were surprised by what we'd heard:
What Tarlov said was unmistakable. She'd said the name "Suzanne."
To appearances, this was a reference to Sends in The Clown—to the Fox News Channel's rarely-discussed Suzanne Scott.
Sends in The Clowns—AKA, Scott—is the CEO of the Fox News Channel. As such, she's the person who pries the lid of the can and lets the ugly inanity out.
She heads the most watched of our struggling nation's best-known "cable news" channels. Indeed, the channel she heads is the most watched of those three channels by far.
Every day, when she sends in the clowns, she engineers an undisguised attack on the very possibility of conducting an American nation. But her name is rarely heard. In the major organs our own declining Blue America, her conduct is rarely discussed.
Who in the world is this Suzanne Scott, who's known to the ancients as Sends in The Clowns? We'll start by letting the leading authority on her life and times offer this very brief glimpse:
Suzanne Scott
Suzanne Scott is the current CEO of Fox News, the second CEO in the network's history. She was ranked 61st in Forbes's 2021 list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women.
Scott was raised in Parsippany, New Jersey... Her father ran a trucking company out of the family home, and her mother worked as a real estate agent. She is a 1988 graduate of American University.
Career
Scott worked as an executive assistant to Chet Collier at CNBC before moving with him to Fox News at its inception in 1996. She began her work there as a programming assistant.
According to a 2018 Fox News Channel press release, "Throughout her tenure at Fox News, Scott has risen through the ranks in a number of programming, production and creative positions including: executive vice president of programming (2016); senior vice president of programming and development (2009); vice president of programming (2007); network executive producer (2005); as well as associate producer, producer and senior producer of On the Record with Greta Van Susteren (2002–2005)...
Normally, this type of rise in the ranks would be applauded. These aren't normal times.
(Eventually, Van Susteren became the channel's helpmate to Donald J. Trump as he spent four or five years spreading the claim that President Obama had been born in Kenya. Scott had engineered the program, then someone had sent in a clown.)
Today, we want to provide a quick overview of Scott's tenure atop Fox News. When she was named CEO in 2018, the channel was mired in such minor distractions as the problems cited below.
To avoid paywalls, we'll offer this report from The Guardian. We can't vouch for perfect fairness and balance:
Meet Suzanne Scott: the new Fox News CEO who enforced 'miniskirt rule'
Fox News announced on Thursday that their new CEO will be Suzanne Scott, currently the president of programming. The company has effectively been without an official CEO since Roger Ailes was ousted in 2016 amid sexual harassment allegations, although Rupert Murdoch had stepped in to run the channel during the interim.
In their press release about the news, Lachlan Murdoch—recently announced as CEO and chairman of Fox, Fox News’s parent company—made much of Scott being the organization’s first female CEO. However, many are concerned that Scott is a member of Fox’s old guard and her appointment is not a break from the toxic workplace culture that led to so many harassment and discrimination claims being made.
Scott herself is mired in the many harassment claims. Staff were apparently aghast when she was promoted last year, as she had been the executive tasked with enforcing Ailes’s miniskirt dress code for women. One anonymous former staff member told the Daily Beast how Scott would enforce a “skimpy” dress code in coordination with the wardrobe and makeup departments.
[...]
Through a Fox News spokesperson, Scott has previously denied enforcing a dress code or corralling support for Ailes.
We can't tell you exactly what happened. According to The Guardian (and others), that's how it was back then. For the record, we find no sign that the 2019 feature film, Bombshell—a portrait of this harassment culture—included a character representing Scott.
Before too long, a different problem had emerged at the channel. The 2020 election had come along, and some of the clowns had gone wild.
This time, we'll go with the account in the New York Times. We can't vouch for perfect accuracy, but you may get the overall gist:
Lachlan Murdoch Defends Fox News’s Chief Executive Amid Defamation Suit
Lachlan Murdoch, whose family controls the Fox media empire, issued a full-throated show of support on Thursday for Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, as the cable channel faces a $1.6 billion defamation suit that has generated a cascade of unflattering revelations about its inner workings.
The documents revealed in the Dominion case showed Ms. Scott, among other executives and some of the network’s hosts, worrying that conservatives would abandon Fox News if its coverage became too critical of former President Donald J. Trump and his allies’ baseless claims of rampant voter fraud.
At one point, Ms. Scott privately criticized one of the network’s White House correspondents for describing many of Mr. Trump’s claims as “simply not true” during a live segment. “I can’t keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers and how to handle stories,” Ms. Scott wrote in an internal email.
Ms. Scott’s future at Fox News has been the focus of some recent speculation. The defamation suit, filed by Dominion Voting Systems, argues that Fox News leadership allowed stars like Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs to air rank falsehoods about rigged voting machines that ruined Dominion’s business. Rupert Murdoch said in a deposition that any of his executives who knowingly allowed lies to be broadcast “should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of.”
Scott had been sending in such stars as Judge Jeanine. We'll let the leading authority on the suit refresh you as to the outcome:
Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network
Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network (colloquially Dominion v. Fox) was a U.S. defamation lawsuit filed in March 2021 by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News Channel and its corporate parent Fox Corporation. Dominion's complaint sought US$1.6 billion in damages, alleging several Fox programs had broadcast false statements that Dominion's voting machines had been rigged to steal the 2020 United States presidential election from then-president Donald Trump. Fox News argued that it was reporting "pure opinion" regarding what others were saying which, if true, would be protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Dominion focused on allegations made between November 2020 and January 2021 by hosts Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, and Jeanine Pirro. Guests who often appeared with these hosts included Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, both of whom have also been sued individually by Dominion in federal court. During pre-trial discovery, Fox News' internal communications were released, indicating that prominent hosts and top executives were aware the network was reporting false statements but continued doing so to retain viewers for financial reasons.
In a summary judgment on March 31, 2023, Delaware Superior Court judge Eric M. Davis ruled that none of the disputed statements Fox News made about Dominion were true and ordered a trial to determine if the network had acted with actual malice. Several prominent Fox News personalities and senior executives were expected to testify at trial. On April 18, as opening statements were about to begin, the judge announced that the parties had reached a settlement. Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million and acknowledged the court's earlier ruling that Fox had broadcast false statements about Dominion. The settlement did not require Fox News to apologize. It is the largest known media settlement for defamation in U.S. history. Later that month, Tucker Carlson was fired from hosting Tucker Carlson Tonight, one of cable's highest-rated news shows, in response to the lawsuit's allegations of a toxic work environment on the show's set.
Many performers had been sent in to broadcast their pure opinion. After leaving the Fox News Channel, Tucker Carlson revealed that he had been attacked by unseen demons while he slept in his bed with his wife and their four unconcerned dogs.
With respect to the Dominion disaster, we can't say exactly what role the CEO played in this ugly, destructive assault on the possibility of maintaining the American system. We can repeat the text of that one email:
“I can’t keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers and how to handle stories."
Does Scott understand her channel's viewers? if so, she seems to believe that the way to please them is to keep sending in the clowns.
In fact, we're being much too kind in our description of this particular "cable news" channel. The performers in question can perhaps be derided as clowns, but their effect on the American system is much more destructive than that jibe might suggest.
Meanwhile, other CEOs at other large orgs keep sending in our own Blue American clowns—the people who refuse to report or discuss the work that is done on this "cable news" channel. Who are the people who can be blamed for the silence those Blue American troupes maintain?
Has more than the one CEO been sending in the clowns? We'll consider that question as the week proceeds. For today, we're going to leave you with an extremely strong recommendation.
By accident, we stumbled upon a remarkable podcast early yesterday morning. We refer to Rosie O'Donnell's recent appearance on Nicolle Wallace's podcast, The Best People.
We were stunned by the clear, clean voce O'Donnell brought to the various elements of the day's discussion. We don't agree with every single thing that Rosie said, but we don't think we've never seen an equally striking set of presentations by an American public figure.
We strongly recommend that you watch that remarkable presentation. We'll offer you two link below. Meanwhile, sad:
With the acquiescence of CEO Scott, the clowns who are working to destroy the nation make O'Donnell one of their endless foils.
Over at the Fox News Channel, Suzanne Scott sends in the clowns. At the major orgs of our own Blue America, an unnamed set of the finer people sends in their own assortments of clowns—clowns who have agreed that the behavior of the Fox News Channel must never be reported.
O'Donnell mentions the latter problem in the course of her discussion.
We're proud to say that we had three (3) brief encounters with Rosie along the way during her varied career, starting in 1984, when she had just turned 22.
We're enormously proud of those three brief encounters today. We've never seen a public figure who impressed us nearly this much.
Tomorrow: Pleasing Suzanne's viewers last Friday
Links to the Wallace/O'Donnell podcast: To listen to the podcast (with transcript), you can just click here.
To watch the podcast through the wonders of YouTube, you can just click this.
An array of topics and aspects of life are discussed. We don't agree with every assessment, but we were blown away by a certain clear, clean voice.
Shouldn't the public be told about this:
ReplyDelete"WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A string of correctly spelled texts supposedly written by Donald J. Trump during an interview with CNN has fueled fresh speculation that he has died, experts confirmed on Monday.
According to Davis Logsdon, the nation’s foremost authenticator of Trump’s digital communication, “The texts, notable not only for their correct spelling but for their proper grammar, were the work of someone with at least a seventh-grade education.”
“It’s impossible to identify the author of these texts, but it was someone capable of putting words together to form complete sentences,” he added. “That rules out most of his Cabinet.”
In the most troubling sign, Logsdon said, one of the texts asked if the Nobel Peace Prize could be awarded posthumously—and featured a correct spelling of the word “posthumously.”
The Nobel Peace prize cannot be awarded posthumously -- but maybe posthumorously?
DeleteToday Somerby gushes over Rosie O'Donnell, as if he has just discovered her common sense. Where was he when she was driven out of the country by Trump's targeting of her?
ReplyDeleteThere is no one named Suzanne Scott running Fox News. That network is wholly owned by the Republicans and if anyone here thinks she has free will to shape what happens there, they are crazier than Trump. But she makes a fine scapegoat for Somerby today. And she is female, so Somerby can really enjoy bashing her. Meanwhile the real culprits are doing their thing, unhampered, and no one is asking where Trump is, even though he has again disappeared from public view, while his staff writes his social media posts.
Suzanne Scott makes a nice distraction from Trump's current disappearance. She isn't doing anything different today than she has done all along. Ask yourself why Somerby is talking about her today...
Somerby doesn't agree with everything Rosie O'Donnell said on Wallace's show, but apparently he doesn't remember or want to mention, much less quote a single thing she said. He finds space to name-drop his own acquaintance with her, but he was nowhere when Trump was maligning her, nowhere when she left the country, and now he can quote Gutfeld and McEnany but has no room for O'Donnell's explanations of why she left America when Trump was elected, no room for anything substantive and important she said, nothing that his own readers might care about hearing.
Has there ever been anyone more useless on this planet than Somerby?
Various commenters have been concerned about the loss of our democracy since 2024, when we supported Harris against Trump while Somerby complained about the border and said Biden was too old, echoing right wing attacks. Now we have MAGA physically attacking judges who have ruled against the right's attack on our democracy and Somerby can only talk about how Fox is run by a CEO! What is wrong with this blog?
ReplyDeleteFrom Alternet:
"In the wake of widespread outrage following a violent fire at a South Carolina judge's house that sent three people to the hospital, critics blamed MAGA, causing White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to melt down, according to The Daily Beast.
South Carolina Judge Diane Goodstein, who ruled against the Trump administration in a high-profile voter registration case, was out walking her dogs Sunday when her beach house exploded in flames.
Judge Goodstein issued a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration’s Department of Justice from getting access to the South Carolina Election Commission’s voter registration data, The Daily Best says.
Reports say Goodstein was already receiving death threats before the fire, which is being investigated as arson. Her husband Arnold, a former Democratic state congressman and state senator, , was forced to jump from the first floor to escape the blaze and was hospitalized with multiple broken bones.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) posted on his X account pointing his finger at Miller, saying, "Stephen Miller and MAGA-world have been doxxing and threatening judges who rule against Trump, including Judge Goodstein. Today, someone committed arson on the Judge’s home, severely injuring her husband and son. Will Trump speak out against the extreme right that did this??”
MIller immediately melted down on X, calling Goldman "deeply warped and vile," saying, “There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks."
Miller continued his rant, saying, “While the Trump Administration has launched the first-ever government-wide effort to combat and prosecute illegal doxing, sinister threats and political violence you continue to push despicable lies, demented smears, malicious defamation and foment unrest. Despicable."
But Goldman had the last word.
"If you are trying to combat political violence, why don’t you condemn the political violence against a judge who ruled against you and your admin? It’s pretty simple: do you condemn all political violence or only that against your supporters?”
Need to investigate how she got that house for 1.5M
DeleteThis is what is happening here, in the USA, under Trump's administration. Note that this is what CITIZENS experienced, not immigrants but people who were born and raised in the USA. People with every right to be here and to live our lives without terror:
ReplyDelete"In an article published on October 6, The New Republic's Alex Shephard emphasizes that the raid should not be viewed as an isolated incident, but rather, as an indication that President Donald Trump is ramping up his "extralegal assault" on civil liberties both in the United States and abroad.
"'It felt like we were under siege' — that's how Darrell Ballard, a 63-year-old Chicago resident, described a massive federal raid on a South Side apartment complex on Tuesday that involved a swarm of drones, snipers rappelling from helicopters, and hundreds of heavily armed agents," Shephard explains. "They stormed the building, breaking down doors and igniting flashbang grenades, and pulled out dozens of residents — some of whom were naked children, and many of whom were U.S. citizens…. Two days after federal agents turned a peaceful apartment complex in Chicago into a war zone, Donald Trump informed Congress that he had 'determined' that drug cartels operating in foreign countries are 'nonstate armed groups' and 'unlawful combatants,' whose actions 'constitute an armed attack against the United States.'"
[Alternet]
Meanwhile Somerby discusses how bad Fox is, with a lengthy explanation that Fox is run by someone named Suzanne Scott, as if she were personally devising all the BS spewed by Gutfeld and others on his show. We all know where Fox policy comes from and it isn't some lady named Suzanne.
The way Somerby gushes over O'Donnell while mentioning nothing she said, you get the feeling he is trying to escape being called misogynist with his attack on Suzanne Scott. If he luvs O'Donnell so much, he can't be doing this out of animosity toward women, can he? Well, yes, he can. In neither case does he do either woman the courtesy of explaining what she did wrong or right. O'Donnell has a crisp clear voice, Somerby says. That sounds like Somerby's praise for Harris's warm smile. But what did she actually SAY?
ReplyDeleteScott is CEO of Fox. Somerby today attempts to blame her for every bad thing that has occurred at Fox, including the sexual harrassment, the lying, the entire right wing agenda. Now she has been appointed CEO and Somerby apparently thinks she writes Gutfeld's scripts. None of us lefties would ever want her job, but she is not Stephen Miller, not JD Vance, and certainly not Trump. She didn't do the harrassing of female staff herself -- the guys did that, but she did help the network cope with the accusations. Deflecting the misogynistic behavior blame onto her, as Somerby does today, is unfair when he had nothing to say about that same behavior when it was revealed and correctly attributed to the men who did such things.
How long would Scott be doing any of the jobs through which she worked her way up if she told McEnany to stop interrupting Tarlov or told Gutfeld to tone down the whale jokes? If women quit in disgust every time some Republican told a lie or molested a coworker, such Republican women would have no careers. Now she is the head of the network but does she run the propaganda side of Fox? I doubt it. I think she counts the beans and sells the ads and manages the administration of the network. Gutfeld is responsible for his own jokes and those guys who fondled women are responsible for their own acts, not some woman named Suzanne.
Suzanne Scott is what you end-up with, when you keep immigrants from coming to the USA and making it a much better place.
DeleteAs you note, @11:13 Scott is the CEO. No, she doesn't write Gutfeld's scripts. No, she isn't personally harassing staff. She does, however, decide what behaviors are acceptable. She does decide how the network "handles stories" in a way that builds an audience. It is her decision whether McEnany can get away with repeatedly talking over Tarlov. It is her decision whether Gutfeld can continue asking whether Hunter is "banging" Jill.
DeleteOur own eyes and ears tell us what she has decided.
QiB - But Scott is a woman, so our resident, pseudo-hyper-feminist Nonny Moose is programmed to say that Somerby must be a misogynist for criticizing her.
DeleteIn an economic system based on merit, Suzanne Scott would never be hired over an immigrant.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, bizarre lifeform Bari Weiss heads the CBS news division.
ReplyDeleteMurrow is rolling in his grave.
DeleteShe should write a book on how to whine about being fucking cancelled on the way to being the head of CBS news. Jesus these fucking weirdo "I am under attack from the left" grifters, and all the money they scoop up. How depressing those deluded Trump cultists are to be giving these POS grifters their money to lie to and push Putin's propaganda to them. Fucking idjits.
DeleteNature is healing
DeleteWhat will Gutfeld say about Weiss? Is she also "livestock"?
DeleteNever going back
ReplyDeleteNEW — Trump approval poll with young voters (Age 18-39):
Approve 52% (+10)
Disasaprove 42%
Insider Advantage | LV | 9/30
NYT/Siena (age 18-29)
DeleteDo you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?
Approve 30%
Disapprove 66%
1,313 RV Sept 22-27
Latest Trump Approval polls:
DeleteRepublican Voters: 95%
People not sexually attracted to children: 0%
I am curious whether any news outlet in the past has conducted the sort of reporting /You Gracious Host advocates. Back when newspapers were the primary news source for America, there were many that were deeply biased to the point of dishonesty. Did their competitors report on their misrepresentations, or did they "avert their gaze" the same way "Blue American Clowns" are accused of doing today?
ReplyDeleteMore to the point, is Our Host calling for a revival of media criticism or is he asking for something entirely new?
There was the "Fairness Doctrine" that required both "sides'ism" to maintain your FCC broadcast license. Of course Ronnie's proto fascist team of still butt-hurt old Goldwater advisors had to kill that shit. It would not apply to cable broadcasts or podcasts of course, so doubt much impact in today's sick media culture.
DeleteI'm struck by this entry at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_circulation_wars
DeleteEarly 20th century Chicago was home to nine different daily newspapers. When Randolph Hearst entered the market with his Daily American, a violent circulation war broke out that included intimidation, beatings, threats, and even terrorizing the customers of rivals advertisers.
Yet none of the papers reported any of it. Would Your Gracious Host have said at the time that they all "averted their gaze"?
Several stations used to have shows devoted to media criticism. I don’t know if there still are such shows. My vague memory is that they pulled their punches. Their criticism wasn’t as harsh as it should have been.
DeleteAs long as no-one pulls their punches with fascist scum constantly lying to America, it will be alright.
Delete3:35,
DeleteI remember these and agree with your assessment.
If I remember correctly, they even treated the Republican Party like it wasn't a crime syndicate.