255. ARE YOU BEING SERVED?

From the Archives. (September 2006) I loaned Dorothy Allison’s Trash to Danishgrrrl a few weeks ago and found myself flipping through this book about class, geography, and gender issues last night.

Allison articulates things about my childhood and shame and adult anxieties that I never even acknowledged out loud to myself before reading this book.

She also goes a long way toward explaining my anxiety about taking Danishgrrrl to SC to meet my family of origin.

Meanwhile, I have been shaking my head at the fact that Andrew Fastow is going to the slammer for a mere six years. I mean, think about what this guy did and its repercussions (not to mention the fact that he already received a great plea bargain agreement that reduced his sentence to just 10 years behind bars).

My question is, why not punish this man the way his crimes punished others and take away his retirement accounts and benefits and compensation and job, then force him to spend the rest of his days living on a fixed minimum-wage income?

The judge defended Fastow’s light sentence by saying that he had been persecuted and portrayed as a symbol of corporate greed after Enron’s collapse.

Aw.

(Excuse me but wasn’t his choice to perform criminal activities that led to Enron’s collapse the very thing that earned him this reputation in the first place?)

Maybe I am naive, but my impression is that most law-abiding citizens frown upon criminal activity, especially when the criminals rake in millions while leaving tax payers to bail out the people he bilked.

My understanding is also that justice is theoretically blind, but this articulate white sociopath with a is getting off way too fricking easy.

Question: does anyone believe for a moment that this judge would extend a comparable rationale to, say, a child molester?

Oh you poor man, your neighbors shunned and persecuted you and crossed the street when you approached and made you suffer so. Oh you poor, poor man. You have paid such a steep price already, So I tell ya what I’m gonna do. I'll sentence you to four years less than your plea bargain agreement because of your awful, awful suffering.

And inquiring minds want to know what exactly this guy’s “extraordinary steps toward rehabilitation” were.

Did he donate one of his MacMansions to the thousands of Enron employees whose savings he bilked?

Nope. Near as I can tell, the judge was referring to the fact that the poor man had to raise his two kids alone for one year while his criminal wife served her similarly minimal sentence.

Guess the judge doesn’t recognize that members of the law-abiding population struggle to raise their kids with limited resources and in single-parent homes too—and will have an even harder time of it now that we have to bail out these corporate crooks.

Unbelieveable.

Meanwhile, the Georgia branch of the Christian Coalition voted to leave this organization because it is just not conservative enough for them anymore.

Their stance is that the organization ought to be focusing solely on the core issues: criminalizing abortion and legalizing homophobia

(coz the Bible tells them so).

I suggest that they realign themselves with Fred Phelps so that everyone knows exactly what kinds of bigots we are dealing with.

No time right now, but I also made a mental note to research Republinazi pollster Frank Luntz’s materials. He’s the guy who provides speaking tips to the GOP and, apparently, his 160-page memo “The New American Lexicon” is the source of GOP members’ current insistence on using Democrat Party instead of Democratic Party.

LISTENING TO: George Winston’s “Summer”

READING: A fascinating article on fused participles (yawn). Last night, I also flipped through Great Lies for Adults to Tell Kids. (My personal favorite is “Wine makes mommy clever.”) Also Dorothy Allison’s Trash, which I will excerpt later.

SANG IN SHOWER: do your chain hang low? Do it rattle to the flo? (I curse Danishgrrrl’s teenagers for getting this stuck in my head!)

BEST-OF SPAM: Did you know that statistics say that sex makes you look 12 years younger?