Dick

Waldman weighs in on Morris’s split with Fox News:

[W]hat really did him in, I think, was when it came out in December that he was, in all probability, running a scam on the Fox News viewers whom he implored to contribute to his super PAC to defeat Barack Obama. None of the money went to that cause, instead probably finding its way back into Morris’s pocket. It’s one thing to treat Fox viewers like fools—most of the network’s personalities do that every day. But it’s quite another to treat them like marks. If you do it as blatantly as Morris did, the entire brand is threatened.

Weigel piles on:

[L]et’s kick Dick Morris while he’s down. He wasn’t merely an inaccurate pundit. He was a con artist. He used his Fox News hits and Hill columns (he still has the columns!) to pitch candidates that he would concurrently schlep to people who signed up on his mailing list.

I have to say, however, that I see little reason to single him out. When asked why he kept a delusional, utterly uninformed fantasist on his staff as a commentator – a former half-term governor whose name now escapes me – Roger Ailes answered with one word: ratings. When you run a news operation with the sole criterion of ratings and feeding viewers what they want to hear so they can watch more of the ads making you money … you end up with the News of the World and FNC. You can’t really blame the grifters – like Palin and Beck and Morris – for smelling the cash.