Fat dick and Fox News chief Roger Ailes is shopping a memoir, New York's Gabriel Sherman reports. It looks like the man who devoted his life to building a multibillion-dollar platform from which to attack his political and personal enemies wants to sum it all up in a book attacking his political and personal enemies.

No deal has been made yet—and Fox News is coyly passing on the question—but Sherman (who is writing his own book about AIles and Fox News) says agent-to-the-political-monsters Bob Barnett is representing Ailes in negotiations with HarperCollins, News Corp.'s publishing arm, for a $3 to $4 million advance. Fox flunky Jim Pinkerton will co-write.

Sherman interprets the development as an indication that Ailes intends to retire after his contract is up in 2013. Ailes has seemed to vacillate on that count: He ostentatiously purchased some small-town newspapers and a country home a few years ago, announcing plans to eventually retire as a gentleman publisher. But then he befouled those papers with his megalomania and paranoia and began making noise about carrying on after 2013.

I think I've figured out what's going on—every time Ailes decides to retire, he goes on a little valedictory press tour to shore up his reputation. Then he starts believing all the press and realizes yet again what a genius he is and decides to stay on, until he starts to get tired and decides to pull back, and the cycle continues. Writing this book will no doubt convince him that his country needs him at the helm of Fox News until he dies. If he dies.

[Image via AP]