A lot of people are wondering how these scandals happen. A governor tries to sell a senate seat? What was he thinking? (When a seat in the United States senate is vacated, that state’s governor makes an appointment to complete the term. He can appoint himself by resigning from office and having the new governor give him the job.) Scanning over one article after the next, about Gov. Blogowitz (as I call him, since his whole scene is great for bloggers and his name is impossible to spell), his bossy wife, Jesse Jackson Jr. and lots of other demented surprises, I was reminded of a moment shortly after taking over the campus magazine at SUNY Buffalo.<\/p>\n
The prior editorial board had been thrown off campus after a scandal (I will skip the details) and I was hired at age 20 to reconstitute, rename and start the magazine over. I called it Generation<\/em>, and it was a beautiful thing (still in print, by the way), built on a reasonable budget and my usual knack for attracting talented artists and writers. Shortly after beginning, the owner of the printing plant where we printed 10,000 copies of the magazine each week, HMS Printers of Lacawanna, called me and our photo editor, Henry Rappaport, into his office. He had a deal for us. We would overcharge for printing and he would give us some of the money back.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He was offering what are called kickbacks. I must have looked at him like he had turned purple or grown a second head. “You’re asking me to steal from my own magazine?” I said, never being one to mince words. I declined the offer. He let it drop. I let it drop. But it occurs to me that there is a world of people who would think nothing of going for such a deal; after all, it’s money, and everyone needs that. Stealing is only wrong if you get caught. Then there is this nifty thought form: What if I don’t take the kickback? Will this person do something even more evil to me? Will he mess me up somehow? I better take it, lest something worse happen.<\/em><\/p>\n It is a tricky thing, trusting people with power. We all know that most serious wrongdoing goes unacknowledged, unprosecuted, unpunished. This makes it appealing to some, and it leaves the issue in our own hands, subject to our own sense of ethics. Most of the people around us, fearing for their own skin or wanting to keep their lives simple, won’t say anything to anyone — and the beat goes on.<\/p>\n Gov. Blogowitz was particularly brazen — comically so. Read one of those articles and set aside your sense of morality for your sense of irony. It’s almost as funny as The Onion<\/em>, but lacking the imagination. He neglected to notice that Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, was in his own neighborhood. Fitz was the guy who went after Cheney, Rove and Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame spy outing scandal a few years back.<\/p>\n This is a healing process. I love these scandals because they scare the shit out of the many, many politicians who are involved in precisely this kind of deal-making. They are fascinating morality plays and studies in human nature.<\/p>\n They are disgusting because they lack creativity, vitality and reveal just how unconscious we humans can be. Now we have a moment of awareness. I would propose you not let this shake your faith in democracy, because if such exists, it begins and ends with you.<\/p>\n Yours & truly,<\/p>\n A lot of people are wondering how these scandals happen. A governor tries to sell a senate seat? what was he thinking? (When a seat in the United States senate is vacated, that state’s governor makes an appointment to complete the term.) Scanning over one article after the next, about Gov. Blogowitz (as I call him, since his whole scene is great for bloggers and his name is impossible to spell), his bossy wife, Jesse Jackson Jr. and lots of other demented surprises, I was reminded of a moment shortly after taking over the campus magazine at SUNY Buffalo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,783,785,784,786,356],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7781"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Eric](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.planetwavesweekly.com\/resources\/images\/sign_white.jpg?resize=185%2C45&ssl=1\" "\\"Planet")
<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"