On December 30, 1941, Winston Churchill spoke to the Canadian Parliament, updating his fellow Commonwealthers about the World War Two effort. The war was far from won, of course, but by then, both the USA and USSR were in the war against Germany. So Churchill could chortle a bit when he recalled a German general telling Hitler, the year before, "In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." Churchill paused for effect. And then he said, "Some chicken. Some neck." In other words, don't count your chicken necks before they're wrung. And the rest, as they say, is The History Channel.
Now to Fox. Writing in The Miami Herald, the talented TV critic Glenn Garvin recalled the early days:
"When media baron Rupert Murdoch announced in 1995 that he was creating the Fox News Channel, CNN founder Ted Turner smirked that he was 'looking forward to squishing Rupert like a bug.' A few months later, when Murdoch hired Roger Ailes to run the channel, sniffed that Fox News was just something for Ailes to play with -- 'less a toy than an imaginary friend.'"
Garvin continued:
"Today, as Fox News celebrates 10 years on the air, there won't be any cracks about insects or Erector Sets: It's the No. 1 cable-news network, as it has been for the past 58 months, with an audience almost as big as its two main competitors combined. It took Fox News just five years to surpass MSNBC, with its powerful corporate backers, and CNN, which had a 16-year head start."
Or, as Churchill might put it in his simple declaratory way: "Some bug. Some toy."
