2006-01-18 - 12:03 a.m.
I don’t pretend to understand this Abramoff scandal – I’m afraid it’s beyond me. But this I can tell: He is a loathsome fellow. And I mean that on a simple basic level. I just find myself wondering: What is it that turns supposedly decent folks into corrupt monsters of soul-rotting arrogance and conceit? We see it again and again, from Democrats like Dick Morris, who has redeemed himself from his loathsome Clinton-era fall from grace, to just about everyone I can think of in the present administration.
People say they are motivated by altruism and kindness, but in truth they are really just driven by a lust to be powerful and to destroy the other side. And you find yourself realizing: If you want to be successful, ethics and legalities are for the Little People. To succeed, you must be ruthless and criminal, with a willingness to betray, corrupt, manipulate, and destroy.
You’d expect folks to remember the rules of kindness and goodness that they should have learned at their dear grandmother’s knee. Yet, instead, what happens is that these supposedly “good” folks commit acts that Dante would just put them down in the deepest pits of Hell for. There is no link between being “great” and being “good.” In fact, one can’t help but think that the “greater” you are, the more you must be loathsome.
For all our modern technology and elevated ideas, men have not changed since the era of the Borgias and the Medicis. Corruption runs rampant and is disguised as virtue. And, in the present day, the only difference between the two sides is that one is in charge and one is not. It disgusts me. And the worst thing is, Abramoff thinks he’s a good person: He considers himself a faithful and god-fearing Orthodox Jew, when he’s out there bribing and sleazing his way into the White House Lincoln Bedroom. Disgusting.
So there is this nasty-ass lobbyist who has been blithely bribing (mostly Republican) lawmakers? And companies and special interests have been busily hiring him on the understanding that he WOULD be bribing them, hmm? And now that Abramoff has been caught, he is going to turn over his little black Blackberry and squeal like a little piglet who’s been speared with a bowie knife, yes?
If this were Ancient China, they’d execute every lawmaker who took a meeting with the fellow. They’d do the same to all the guilds and agencies that hired him to give bribes and presents to the criminal congressman. And even Mr. Abramoff himself would be killed, probably from receiving as many lashes on his back as bribes he made.
I have always thought that we are crazy about punishment in this country. It seems that the only possible way for justice to be served in this era is for the crook either to pay a comparatively modest fine or to to be in a prison, where he’s fed three delicious meals a day until he gets to go home again. There is no punishment on the books that is suitable for someone who seeks to undermine the country to suit his own needs. In the old days, they had the stocks. They had the pillory. They had the ducking stool. They had that wooden yoke – and those pinscher things that they used to put toes inside. They had public beatings. Now THAT was a way to punish someone. The power of humiliation is just what those smirking beasts at Enron need.
And Abramoff: Wouldn’t it be lovely if, at his trial, he was dragged before the Judge, who would be snappily caparisoned in a velvet cape and a gigantic hat that folded sideways into several wings, a la Judge Dee from the Robert Van Gulik novels?
“Accused Abramoff!” Judge Dee would snarl. “Of the charges of bribery and extortion and conspiracy to corrupt the public officials – how do you plead?”
“Honored Judge,” Abramoff would whimper, on his knees, “This insignificant person dares to plead guilty to the charges.”
“You dog’s head! You filth!” Judge Dee would snarl. “I have on record all the people you have bribed and corrupted. But how can we be sure that you are telling the truth? You are a criminal – a beast! I must torture you until we know the truth!”
Abramoff would weep bitter tears as he kowtowed before Judge Dee, smacking his head repeatedly against the stone floor. “Your esteemed honor! This dog begs forgiveness for his wicked sins! I didn’t mean to do it!”
“Silence!” Judge Dee would roar. He would grab a handful of bamboo chips from the bowl in front of him and toss them to the floor. “Headman! Do your duty!”
How Abromoff would howl as the burly, masked executioner would grab him by the neck and rip his suit clean down the back! And as the headman would swing his whip, cracking the lobbbyist’s spine, the blood would pour like a river -- one slash for each of the hundred or so bamboo chips on the floor.
“Aiiiie! Master! I confess!” Abramoff would howl. “I am guilty!”
You see, now that’s justice for you. A similar fate, I think, should befall this writer fellow that everyone is talking about – James Frey, author of that set of fake memoirs about a junkie who cleans himself up. Now, I have not read this terrible sounding book. Why would I? In my free time, I like to read PLEASANT things -- a little P. G. Wodehouse, perhaps, or a nice science fiction novel taking place in a world in which the Nazis won World War II. I do not tend to pick up depressing tales about people hitting bottom and achingly recovering, unless I am being paid for it, of course.
But I have to admit that I can think of nothing more appalling than someone putting forward a first person account that purports to be written to help other people with their troubles, and then being unmasked as being a total scam and a fake. It’s disgusting! What can he have been thinking? Well, of course I can tell you: He and his equally vile publishers and publicists were thinking of making cash off of the pain and misery of others.
This entire scandal has opened up a debate on the nature of literature that I think is totally obfuscatory of the actual facts. The disgusting publishers have been desperately trying to excuse the impersonation by squawking, “Oh, we never said this was a true story! It is fiction! In fact, James Frey should be congratulated for creating a new genre – the genre of ‘fictional memoirs!’ And didn’t Oscar Wilde himself use to say that there never was anything more full of lies than autobiography?”
I have heard folks all try to excuse the appalling behavior of this revolting writer, with even that beast of beasts Oprah Winfrey oinking between bites of her roast chicken dinner that what matters more than the reality is the fact that Frey wrote “emotional truth.” Honey pie, that book was marketed as non fiction, pure and simple. And there is no emotional truth without physical truth.
People were buying this stupid book, hoping to use it as a template for their own lives. And it was totally fake! I am sure the book READ as though it was written by a recovering drug addict, too, for pure verisimilitude. There is no difference between this book and an article written by that oiksome New York Times reporter who was unmasked as a total liar – no I am not talking about Kit Roane, I’m talking about Jason Blair. Or that woman a decade or two earlier, who wrote that Pulitzer Prize Winning article about drug addicts that turned out to be a total fake. There can be no defense of this, even if it is a nicely written book, which I am not sure that it is.
I have the feeling that this is a “theme” book, meaning that the perceived author and the material he’s writing about are so intertwined that the quality of the material would not be able to stand alone. Too many people are unable to divorce the theme from the art which presents the theme. For instance, in the 1980s, AIDS-themed plays such as THE NORMAL HEART, AS IS, and ANGELS IN AMERICA were hailed as literature, not because they were particularly well written – they weren’t -- but because they addressed important concerns, such as the state of gays in America. As literature, I put it to you, they were poorly written, amateurish works of hackery. The same can be said for this book of Frey’s, which admittedly I have not read. It is a book about recovery, supposedly BY someone recovering. If you take away the authorship’s personal experience, it loses all of its “emotional truth.”
Back in the day, when I was young and green and attending college in Chicago, I had a friend who had cancer. And he had a friend who used to visit him all the time. He was a super-fit, astonishingly handsome skinhead, bald as a cue ball, but muscular and beautifully buff. And one day, my friend told me, laughing, that one of the cancer nurses came up to him and said, “Man, the other patients love it when my friend comes to visit. They say, he’s proof that a man can have cancer and still look great!”
You see, the other patients, frail and dying of cancer, all of them bald from chemo and radiation therapy, took one look at this fellow and thought that, because he was bald, like they were, he must have been dying of cancer as well. And his baldness gave them hope. And yet – the friend was not cancerous at all.
To me, the lies surrounding the Frey book are not like this at all. The Frey book was written with a totally cynical purpose – Fleece the drug addicts! Or perhaps patronize them, creating a fairy tale of recovery that doesn’t have any basis in reality. It’s sad and disgusting and I would like to turn Frey over to Judge Dee for a good whipping as well for violating the public’s trust.
Oh, blah, blah, blah. You so didn’t come here to listen to me prattle about The Issues of The Day. You want to hear what I’m up to! Well, I have been busy over the past week, which is why I have been rather desultory in writing to you. Do you know that I took on two new jobs? Well, I did. I am reading for a little production company for a pittance – it will keep me from hemmoraging money during those weeks when I am not working for Megalith, which is most weeks, really. Meanwhile, I have also been recruited to do occasional gigs for a script consulting company that’s run by an old friend. I will think of a jokey name for both the production company and the script consultancy company later on.
I must tell you that doing script consulting is probably the closest I get to being a total whore. I man, I am just taking money to fluff up some script or book that has no intrinsic worth whatsoever. I’m like a stripper giving a lap dance to a fat businessman down at an airport strip club. But it pays and it’s better than working as a receptionist at a talent agency which manages folk musicians, which was looking like it was going to be my other part time option.
Meanwhile, my stepdad, poor soul, just had a heart attack! Oh, don’t worry – it wasn’t as bad as that. And in fact, he didn’t JUST have the heart attack so much as he discovered that he had had a heart attack some months ago, but didn’t realize it. Here is what happened. So you see, my stepdad went to the cardiologist for his annual check up, and, after a jaunt on the treadmill, he was given the usual EKG. And what do you think they discovered? Well, it turns out that the heart doctor discovered that the poor fellow had scar tissue all over the inside of his heart. And this means that my stepdad had at some point endured a heart attack and wasn’t even aware of it! Can you imagine such a thing? We were all quite astonished by it all, of course.
My stepdad was, of course, was totally lucky: The current theory is that he suffered the heart attack about a year or so ago, when he had an inexplicable fainting spell. Do you remember when I wrote about this? He had a vagus nerve attack while seated on the john, truly one of the most embarrassing places to faint in all the world. But if the circumstances of the fainting session were ridiculous, the results were anything but, for it now appears that while in shock, he suffered an exceedingly mild cardiac arrest, which he himself didn’t notice. It took until now for anyone to figure out what’s going on.
On the upside, we now know that he HAS had a heart attack and that he must change his life – he must stop smoking and drop about 30 pounds. And he seems definitely upbeat about tackling all these things. What a shame it would be for people like Abramoff and Frey to prosper, while my stepdad falters and is laid low! Judge Dee himself would weep.
