Aspiring fameball Rachel Marsden once loved Fox News mastermind Roger Ailes like an uncle — even after his henchmen booted Marsden from the building. No more: in a "novel" she's shopping, Ailes is the "blubbery" villain.

It's hard to say what made Marsden turn on her benefators in right-wing media. True, she was escorted by security guards from her former job as co-host of Red Eye, a sort of late-night lockup for the truly hard-core lunatic fringe within the crazyhouse that is Fox News. But that hardly soured her on the network; she later emailed us saying she'd "always been a big fan of" Fox News chief Ailes, "and am always honoured to be asked to contribute to anything this great man has built." Fox's flagship shouting head Bill O'Reilly, meanwhile, was "a real man... awesome... a straight shooter, and one of my favourite people in the biz."

Marsden even returned to the News Corp. building for an appearance on Fox Business Network.

So why is Marsden, once known as Canada's answer to Ann Coulter, living in gay communist Paris and shopping a roman à clef named The Voice of America trashing her old network and old bosses? In a sample chapter Marsden is emailing around the publishing industry, the former Fox Newser writes that she has been "resurrected into a new life" as a TV commentator in France. And Ailes is no longer a holy figure to her (emphasis added):

Imagine how pissed off Pontius Pilate was to hear that Jesus' tomb was empty... I often try to picture the meltdown... Then I picture the head of America's most "powerful cable news network" [Ailes] as Pontius Pilate, weeping in his giant second floor office surrounded by his ten TVs, his blubbery figure jiggling with each sob. He doesn't like to lose. And neither do I.



No, Marsden doesn't like to lose anything, or anyone, and that might shed some light into her Fox News flip. She once pled guilty in a Canadian court to harassing her ex boyfriend, and sent some nude pictues of a purported ex lover to the National Post newspaper. Then there was Marsden's messy public breakup with Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, with whom she had a scandalous affair; Marsden now maintains a Google knol dissing Wales and his online encyclopedia.

Count Ailes and Fox News, then, as the latest in a series of spurned former partners and associates. It's fair to say Marsden feels used, yet again:

I was a "talking head". I'm not a big fan of the term. "Talking head" implies the presence of a brain, which isn't always the case. The American cable news network from which I was sprung mostly selected their female talking heads for their tits and legs. I guess nicknaming them "talking tits" or "talking legs" would be overdoing the obvious. It would also totally bust the trailer trash viewing majority who watch the network as the closest thing their old lady will allow them to get to porn

(Emphasis added.) Marsden once told us she had left Red Eye after "a format change in the show from 'politics and news' to 'tits and ass,' which fell outside my area of specialization." Trouble is, Red Eye hardly counts as a real Fox News show, functioning more as the network's drunken late-night id, hopelessly trying to balance the bloated, politicized Fox News ego that holds sway throughout the day. And it's not like those guys are raging sex-crazed sexists. (Ahem.) Full sample chapter below.

(First and last pic above via RachelMarsden.com)