Incoherent Like the Wolff

Michael Wolff writes a column critical of Gabe Sherman for penning a book on (the other) Roger Ailes. He's not panning the book, because he couldn't get a review copy, or something. His criticisms appear to be that Sherman wrote the book even though Ailes denied Sherman's interview requests because Sherman's a liberal, and that Sherman enumerated the precise number of interviews he did, like Kitty Kelley does, rather than giving a ballpark estimate. Wolff suggests that an unauthorized bio is suspect ("without direct access to its subject, [the book] exists in a limbo of the speculative and questionable") because only the subject will tell you the God's honest truth about her or himself.

The column loses all coherence in the final paragraph:

Sherman, somewhat disingenuously, keeps saying that Ailes is a larger-than-life figure on the level of William Randolph Hearst. But Hearst's story, as told in Citizen Kane by Orson Welles, whom Hearst disdained and refused to speak to, has the key distinction of actually being fiction.

What the flying fuck does this mean? That Wm. Randolph Hearst is a fictional character in a story? That Orson Wells' Citizen Kane -- which Sherman wasn't comparing Ailes to -- is fiction? That Sherman shouldn't write an Ailes bio because Citizen Kane is fiction? That authors should only write fictional biographies of people they can't speak to?

And why is it somewhat disingenuous to keep saying that Ailes is a larger-than-life figure on the level of Hearst -- because Hearst is on a higher level of largeness? Because no one's made a fictional movie about an Ailes-like network president?

Rosebud wept.