If you thought the shenanigans at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland were the weirdest thing happening in America this week, you would be wrong.
Mind-boggling and frightening as it is, the Trump circus is almost being outplayed by a high-powered drama that will have equally potent ramifications for conservative politics in the US.
Roger Ailes, the ultra powerful and previously untouchable chairman of Fox News and the creator of the modern Republican Party, resigned after there was talk of his facing the sack for alleged sexual harassment of former Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson. (She was demoted then fired, allegedly for refusing to sleep with him.) It's a harbinger of potentially far-reaching changes – for the direction of Fox News, and thereby the promotion of conservative politics in the US. And it's also thrown up some surprising and frankly disheartening developments.
Ailes' sexually predatory and sexist management "style" – if that is indeed the word – was totally off the Richter scale in scope and in sleaziness. Not even Fox's biggest female star Megyn Kelly escaped.
There was nothing subtle about his interview with Kellie Boyer who was seeking a job with the Republican National Congressional Committee in 1989. "When you want to play with the big boys, you have to lay with the big boys," Ailes said to her, according to a report in the New York Times last week. Everyone needs a special friend, he told her. When she asked whether she would need more than one "friend", he assured that she'd "only have to give a blow job once in a while".
So I was gob-smacked to learn that Susan Estrich is Ailes' lead lawyer. Estrich was the first woman to run a presidential campaign (for Democrat nominee Michael Dukakis in 1988), and is a renowned fighter for sexually abused women, turning her own rape into a searing testimony published as Real Rape in 1987.
Just a year ago she wrote in a local newspaper of being brought to tears by reading in New York magazine the "revelations of Bill Cosby's disgusting behaviour over the last four decades". Now she is spokeswoman for Ailes whose behaviour would seem to be as "disgusting".
Estrich has been an occasional Fox commentator for some years but that hardly explains why she would take this job, especially when full-time Fox employees are declining to stand by their boss. Ailes might think a counter-intuitive defence by a Democrat and a feminist will give him sufficient plausibility to negotiate a juicy severance.
It would not be the first time he's put a woman centre stage to give him the result he wanted (think Fox's election coverage). I can see what might be in it for him – but for her?
When he created the dispiritingly dumbed-down Fox News and turned it into a billion dollar-a-year earner for Rupert Murdoch, Ailes employed plenty of women. But he made them dress as if for beauty pageants rather than as serious journalists or anchors.
The Fox female uniform is a thigh-high, figure-hugging frock in a primary colour – preferably red – worn with ultra high heels, long hair – preferably blonde – and heaps of make-up. Ailes wanted thighs to be on display so pants were forbidden and the women had to sit on couches or under glass tables. Watching the Foxy Ladies, as someone has dubbed them, you could be forgiven for thinking you'd accidentally turned on a rerun of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.
The same rules applied to female – but not male – guests.
As the Atlantic magazine put it back in 2012, the guest might be an expert on nuclear proliferation or Middle East politics but she was expected to appear on national television "looking like a cross between Captain Jack Sparrow and a waitress from Hooters". If she declined, she was never invited on again.
The Murdochs have reportedly decided to side with the women complainants. Megyn Kellyconfirming her own harassment by Aisles was said to be pivotal. Will this mean Fox News will stop forcing its stars to dress that way? Will the influence of the two Murdoch sons in the changes also tone down Fox's ultra-right-wing rhetoric and bring some truth to its reporting?
It is impossible to overstate Ailes' importance to conservative politics in the US over the past three decades so his demise is a big deal.
It is unlikely Fox will collapse into rubble the way the Republican Party is heading but without Ailes as the enforcer, the long-standing nexus between the party and the network will be weakened, if not severed.
Fox has served as the party's propaganda arm for two decades. The relationship was severely tested by the rise of Trump but the network ultimately, if reluctantly, swung in behind him. Will Ailes' replacement have the same partisan attachment?
Watching it all play out is going to be almost as interesting as the election itself.
Twitter: @SummersAnne
