Two Part Exclusive: Satan Refuses Delivery Of Roger Ailes & Holds Trial In Capitol Hill’s “The Disgruntled Toad” Restaurant

Michael J. Matheron, June 16, 2017, EXCLUSIVE, but not surprising. Reporting from the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center at the The Disgruntled Toad immediately adjacent to Hell, Circle One, Gated Community H-001

Much worrying news, political and otherwise, has bombarded us since the perhaps untimely passing of Roger Ailes, the FOX News tyrant, friend, and political mischief consultant to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill O’Reilly, Shawn Hannity, Karl Rove, Donald Trump and others yet to be discovered. As startling as is the continuing self-immolation of the Trump administration, since Roger Ailes’ death we had reason for a slight skip in our step to believe the Ailes era was behind us. Sadly, as I will exclusively report here, it is not. Roger Ailes, is relevant again in an unprecedented way that ought keep us awake at night.

[Fully Redacted Disclosure: The Toad paid handsomely for my complimentary appraisal herein, so don’t complain.]

But First, A Bit About The Toad. This afternoon, Satan, a normally excellent judge of character, refused delivery of Roger Ailes, an ex-living well-qualified miscreant. Through Mr. Ailes’ invitation I acceded to plead his case that audaciously sought a condo in Hell via a permanent residency refugee visa which the Red Eminence declined summarily. Such was my and this news agencies’ reputation for some reasons I don’t really know, Ailes’  called me in from the bullpen on his behalf. Surprisingly, Satan agreed to sit down for a tete-a-tete-a-tete with the formerly alive Mr. Ailes and your still quite alive reporter.

Invisible to other patrons, we retired to the Disgruntled Toad, situated secretly in the Capitol Rotunda since November 2010. The Toad is available exclusively to sitting House and Senate members, disgraced former members thereof, and various cento-millionaire heirs, world tyrants, lobbyists, legislative probationers, scam artists and bankers (but I repeat myself). Newt Gingrich is barred.

Barred as well, of course,  are reporters except George Will, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, and a few others who pop up pretty much everywhere they are actively as unwelcome as Newt Gingrich at any known event whatever. I myself am as well in that elite persona non grata journalistic cabal for what many say are “obvious reasons” that I do not understand. Yet, accompanied by Satan and Ailes made my entrance more welcome than before and hopes were high that I would not again be summarily defenestrated. After roughing me up “for old-times sake” and forcing me to knowingly sign the usual release of liability forms, our maitre d’hostile escorted our party to a premium corner table that – eerily – allowed us to be seen, yet not seen, simultaneously. This boded an interview to end all interviews, as I believe you will agree.

Importantly to my promotional fee from the The Toad but not to the story, it’s the The Disgruntled Toad’s thoughtful foresight and powerful cocktails that draw important poobahs like Satan and Vlad the Filibusterer to its door – even Ted Cruz, whose own children have filed petitions for adoption, is a welcome customer. A primary reason congressloons and senatroids virtually live at The Disgruntled Toad is their constituent-free cocktail hours after hateful bipartisan votes that hamstring nearly 99% of Americans. At last count, the entire GOP and a significant number of democrats rent comfortable cots for overnights and have not seen their constituents or families for months at a time. Nowhere in America other than Vladivostok can legislators beat that level of anonymity short of resignation and escape to Belize or to a prison cell. Signed mug shots line the walls.

What followed our Toad entrance was an excitedly animated graciousness that mixed insolubly with an abject fear I’d not experienced before; but having Satan and a ghostly pale Roger Ailes at my side helped. The Toad, directly inside the U.S. Capitol building foyer, and uncomfortably close alongside Hell’s entrance, serves booze extravagantly, straight up, directly from the bottle, accompanied by a daily endangered species blue plate special: today, a salad, overflowing with the nearly extinct Tanzanian spray toad, recently featured on Animal Planet, a Toad signature dish accompanied by bottles of booze so powerful it curls the hair of elderly bald legislators.

My brief for Ailes’ permanent entry visa to Satan’s Lair. Our uncharacteristically pleasant host sat directly across from Ailes and me, warming us with a toasty but not utterly toasted ambiance. He seemed nice. In truth, I think Satan gets more bad press than deserved. Hades’ landlord, slim, red-cheeked, topped by his impressive pair of burning horns, and outfitted in a Prada Nehru jacket sported a “Let’s Make Hades Great Again” button. Countering my initial impression two sentences ago, he began conversation with a string of multi-lingual imprecations too complex to repeat or to understand, continually narrowing his eyes as he glanced in my direction, leaving me – naively, I hope – squirming in my chair.

Conversely, considering the stakes of the meeting, Mr. Ailes sat comfortably but stiffly since, recall, he was d-e-a-d. But his eyes were not, he wavered not a millimeter with his own narrow eye-set and snide smile that rivaled his sharp-horned rival’s. I whimpered. Had these two met before? The Father of All Nastiness, Satan himself, under Rog’s gaze seemed tentative for, well, a creature of his reputation, i.e. the Father of All Nastiness. Satan was spooked, I realized. I was paralyzed but somehow still able to whimper. Rog, though, was twiddling his thumbs, but not without noticeable concentration, after all, as mentioned previously, he was dead.

Satan smiled in my direction, and above my whimpering, said – screamed, actually – “Relax! Let’s get on with this!” His sudden kindness jolted me back from a paralyzed imitation of a lithe gymnast in a fetal position on a chair. I recovered. And so began this extraordinary disputation in order to permit Roger Ailes’ acceptance into Hell.

“Sir,” I started, “few seem so deliverable,” as I explained what, counter-intuitively, was Mr. Ailes’ plea to go straight to Hell. Satan learned that:

“In our times, sir, Mr. Ailes was among the few persons universally considered as a critical lynch-pin in a decline in nearly every one of the few decent attributes humankind possesses and deploys when absolutely nothing else will work: for example, truth, empathy, generosity, restraint, sexual composure, and conscience. In opposition, Mr. Ailes, as but one example, made the phrase ‘I want to see her legs . . . I want the viewers to see their legs. I want people to watch Fox News even if the sound is turned down.‘

a critical demand of his FOX studio news directors. to such an extent that we really don’t know what many of his second sex newscasters actually looked like from the thighs up.”

“Seen it all before,” the evil Prince replied “Nothing new there. Purgatory’s full of those types. But, do go on.”

I complied, now stuttering:

So nervous, my hair turned brown.

“Sweeping empathy into the dustbin, he led the charge for widespread acceptance of malodorous tendencies. Here’s but a few: promoting right-wing nutters with no pretense of truth; sexual harassment, both on his own ticket and willfully permitted among his pals; blatant racism, nihilism, and other nasty-isms; false conflation of white hatred of non-whites with a Caucasian fantasy of reverse discrimination when in fact, those wounded egos were duped by the very white oligarchs they so admired. Nonetheless, Ailes posed to represent ‘Joe six pack,’ the ‘average Joe,’ always male, always sex-and rifle-crazed. Always warring on women of every race. It was Ailes who made it even more acceptable than before to purposefully promote authoritarianism. He cheered on wealth accumulation that Louis XVI would have criticized. Perhaps, Sir, during recess you could ask him.”

Satan, nodded with what I took to be either preposterous approval or preposterous disgust. Talk about a poker face. His narrow eye slits said, “Continue, you disgusting mule.” I did, but the “mule” part hurt my feelings:

“His vast FOX audience was the ultimate sucker voting regularly against their own and their descendants’ interests. Finally, at Ailes’ funeral it was the negatively esteemed Sean Hannity who indirectly summed it up, accidentally underscoring the truth. when he intoned his self-styled self-centered eulogy, ‘I wouldn’t be what I am today without Roger,‘

Based upon the above and the numerous press reports, legal actions, and hidden bodies whose locations I squeezed out of Mr. Ailes, With hopefully enough humility to permit you to allow me to leave The Toad alive, I ask that you rescind your previous declination of Mr. Roger Ailes’ delivery to your lands.”

Beelzebub graciously offered me his own brand.

Exhausted from talking and drinking straight from the bottle of Jack so kindly provided gratis by His Honor, I tossed down the Red Devil, was thereafter revived with several thousand volts to my chest, and, refreshingly numb, recovered sufficiently to throw down the gauntlet with the mandatory wrap-up:

“I rest my case.,and Sir, with a measure of honesty improvised from dishonesty that I hope appeals to your Honor, I hereby summate:

Where else may we safely put Mr. Ailes but in your care? Discriminating against him as a policy would, if applied henceforth and retrospectively, almost certainly deny many deserving deliveries permission to enter Hell. This is a case of first impression, of course, since unlike everyone else it is Mr. Ailes’ fondest hope to join others with whom he has so much in common. Recall, Sir, hard cases make bad law – or perhaps it’s the other way around, but I trust that you, rather than I, at the least, understand my point.”

Satan blew a plume of fire that singed precisely one-half off my beard and hair. My client squirmed noticeably which was remarkable given his state of non-being. Did my excellent argumentation perhaps confuse or over-awe Satan and Roger? Feeling the breeze at my back, I continued awing them:

“Respectfully, Sir, have you recently raised the bar to entry? Through what process? Is this a simple executive order? Who else will you ban, and for how long? Do you not have a legislative or judicial body to which you must refer or defer? Or is illegal discrimination under the laws of Mr. Ailes’ earthly home inapplicable in your domain? Is ‘reciprocity’ alien to you merely because you are a monarch who can turn granite into dust with a glance? Certainly, Mr. Ailes must have met and surpassed any conceivable vetting procedure you apply for permanent residence in Hell. If not Ailes, who then, your Honor?”

Hotness Under Collarness. I warmed even hotter to my argument, although I sensed that Satan’s heavyweight goons and The Toad‘s own bouncers were inching closer to me with what passes on earth as visages of extreme, murderous malice. I then thought of a legal principle that Woody Allen once labeled “screaming and begging”; who and of what importance, after all, really, is my client to me . . . ? How shall I back away from this abysmally dreadful Ailes fellow and still appear to be pleading his case for a permanent refugee visa to Hell. I did not want to be haled before the Bar Association on an ethics charge, because I’m not a lawyer, and misunderstand the term “ethics,” I swear to God. . . . So I screamed like a three-year old and begged. Goons backed off, a little.

We shall see what happens next this coming Thursday, which on the earth outside of the Capitol Rotunda’s secretive Disgruntled Toad, is June 22, 2017. Meanwhile I shall enjoy the fabulous Velveeta cheese fries, endangered species blue plates, and southwest Missouri rot gut that comprises the entirety of the Toad’s menu, other than antique Twinkies, for dessert. And why would legislators or lobbyists escaping from rampaging constituents about to lose their health care and their homes thereafter desire more?

And even more importantly is Mr. Ailes an appropriate candidate for Hades? Is he too bad for Hell? Has he met the vetting requirements, or is it worse than that? Has Satan slipped up?

See you next Thursday, earth time.