06 February 2007
The Carry Cup
I get questions, and I think about them. Why don't you write about Scooter Libby and the clear obstruction of justice? That popped up the other day. I demurred, looking down the barrel of a Cuban cigar at a glass of smoky cognac. Of course it is riveting. There is nothing more compelling than the deconstruction of Hubris, and that is happening again downtown.
The coolness in tone mirrors the cold snap in the weather, the seemingly emotionless audio of the Grand Jury testimony they played yesterday, the careful words of the former Chief of Staff to the Vice President.
“Gosh,” I said. “It is not that I am not interested. I am filled with grim fascination in the process.”
That was a lie, of course. I was fascinated with humiliation.
The process is something much grander and inexorable, from start to finish. After all, think of all the people who have been asked- not, make that commanded- to come to town and take the spotlight jobs. I sputtered some Starbucks over the newspaper when I read the personal finances of someone I knew. It was embarrassing, and I felt I should have turned away. The Times had printed the gist and numbers of his financial disclosure form, which he was obligated to file and which became a matter of public record.
It is astonishing and creepy to see what you have to do to become eligible to be a target here.
I was amazed that he was willing to take a pay-cut amounting to two million dollars a year to come serve the President. I haven't seen the annual disclosure of the Vice President. I guess it has not been news for some time.
But as to I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and his saga of public disclosure and debasement, I can only watch with a sort of quiet horror.
That is based, of course, on the circumstances that have brought him low. I cannot watch this elegant man the same way I watched the furtive bureaucrats and ambitious citizens who made up the Watergate conspiracy. I did not feel I had much in common with those men, harried by the Committees, and making their revelations, week by week.
They had no useful carry-cups for premium coffee. They did the scandal on Styrofoam cups of luke-warm weak Maxwell House.
Scooter is different, and here is what gets me: if I were only smarter and better looking, more elegantly credentialed and well-connected, it could be me clutching that Starbucks cup in the dock, spending the last of my cash on expensive law-dogs and morning lattes.
It is not that this is so remarkable. It is not. The revelations just show how cynical the inner workings of the Karl Rove West Wing were, and how petty and venal the second highest official in the land can be. As they say, it is not the act that is criminal, it is the denial of it.
It is that one lie, told in the wrong place that brings you low, in this city constructed upon a swamp of half-truths and obfuscation.
The cover-up is the crime, the painfully parsed answers in the depositions and the Grand Jury, when the reporters have come and gone, and Air Force One is safely back in its hangar at Andrews.
That is why I haven't been able to bring myself to write about it. I never got close enough to the flame to be called in front of the special prosecutor.
I'm not smart enough, or sufficiently good-looking to get in that kind of trouble. They will still sell me the Starbucks, though.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com