Farewell, Roger Ailes. Take Trump with you

July 22, 2016 Originally published on SFGate

Never doubt there is a divine and fearful symmetry afoot, usually for the better but then again, these days, who can say?

Behold! It is entirely appropriate that on the same, enormously humiliating day the Republican Party officially nominated Donald Trump for president, AKA the day that America hung its head in shame, one Roger Ailes, the famously turgid, unapologetically biased media mastermind who made Fox News into the billion-dollar bastion of giddy racism and shameless ignorance it so very much is, was on his way to being strategically ousted from the network for allegedly sexually harassing enough women to earn him a nice gift basket from Bill Cosby.

Do you see the symmetry? The weirdly magical, oddly proper cosmic confluence? Sure you do.

It all makes wicked – and maybe even slightly reassuring – sense. See, Ailes reached his nadir. Sauron installed his doppelganger. Trump got the GOP nod and the Fates threw up in their mouths a little as all those years of Ailes-approved, Fox-led fearmongering, misogyny, lying, homophobia, bashing of the environment and women and science et al, resulted in a success far wilder, far nastier than even Ailes, in his most sexually inappropriate fever dream, could possibly imagine.

Ailes: Like a cross between Dick Cheney and a circus carney

Ailes: Like a cross between Dick Cheney and a circus carney

Let history decry: It was Fox News – with Ailes at the helm – that essentially invented Trump the candidate, paved the way, set the tone, made it all kinds of brutally easy for an orange-faced, sociopathic mattress salesman to manipulate/abuse the media and the electoral system alike, flooding them both with fear and childish authoritarianism like nuclear waste into a river.

Make no mistake: Fox News, with its GOP lackeys, made Trump happen. He is their most perfect inbred spawn. His ascent and ruthless takeover of the decaying GOP is entirely deserved: After all, you can’t attack the immune system of the nation for all those years and not expect a virus to ooze on through.

It remains, however, rather amazing to witness: The moment Trump ascends, Ailes flounders. It’s as though the system can only handle so much poison at any given time. It’s as though the gods are saying “Look, you can’t have the Satan and Moloch on the same playbill. Even the cockroaches are in retreat. Someone’s gotta go.” And right now, blessed be the heavens, that means Ailes.

Of course, the Fates are far from done. What will happen after Trump loses the election, and badly? Will he start his own news company, as he once threatened? Will he take over Fox News? Shut it down? Will Ailes then become the next Karl Rove, a sad, mealy troll for the GOP? Will there be some bizarre role-reversal nightmare comedy to witness? Will Melania get her own reality show? Which of Trump’s sons will be first to reveal his wish to become transgender? And how calmly will President Hillary let them all slither into the footnotes of history, and eat each other alive?

Only the Fates know for sure – and truly, they’re a little nauseous right now.

Read more here:: Farewell, Roger Ailes. Take Trump with you?

Mark Morford

About Mark Morford