www.sfgate.com Return to regular view
You Don't Care About Enron
In Bush's America, it just doesn't pay to give a damn about flagrant political corruption
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, February 13, 2002
©2002 SF Gate

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/




Of course you know they did it.

You know the whole pod of shivery Enron execs are all guilty as sin. You can see it in the folds of their chins, the beady black voids of their eyes, the way their horns twitch when they take the Fifth.

You can see it in the way Kenny Boy slumps in the chair looking like a deflated blow-up doll, mouth slightly agape, stunned and goosey, wondering how he let it all get away, as the congressmen tsk-tsk him and shake their heads and call him names.

There they all are, except for the one who committed suicide and gosh isn't that just the slightest bit telling, hiding and equivocating and lying at the Senate hearings like the Big Tobacco execs of yore, who stood up and raised their taloned fingers and swore before God that they really, really don't believe nicotine is in any way deadly except for the heart disease and the cancer and the rampant toxic death.

You know it's all true, mountains of incriminating shredded documentation and roughly $500 million hidden away in magic "fuzzy math" debt, hundreds of millions more shuffled off to non-existent "Star Wars" companies, gutted retirement accounts and ruined employees and Gucci suppositories in the executive washrooms and blatant gouging of California during the energy crisis. Just for starters.

Political back-scratching and toe-sucking and wallet-padding galore, the vast majority (but no, not all) of the scandal landing like a giant elephant-dropping on the Republican side of the aisle and do you hear that? That frantic shredding sound coming from Dick Cheney's office? That ain't Lynne's Gunslinger vibrator, people.

Indeed, this one goes all the way to the top. The Bush administration is so clearly embroiled in Enron's gleeful depravity it would be embarrassing and even downright comical to watch, say, Cheney's outward refusal to reveal all the political inbreeding and cigar-chompin' back-slapping that went on during the energy policy discussions, were it not so insulting and wrong.

Sure you probably feel some pity for all the disgruntled Enron employees whose financial futures are now ruined, the countless gullible stockholders sucked into the vortex and spit out like easy marks at a sidewalk shell-game, the American economy hobbled and wobbly and so clearly at the disposal of corrupt power-mongering CEOs it makes your soul wince.

Over 50 percent of Americans think the Enron debacle is very important to the country, more than double that of Whitewater, and yet it seems to be common knowledge that Ken Lay will get off with barely a scratch, he and his squad of flying monkeys will get nothing but a spanking and maybe a month in Michael Milken minimum-security prison, where the punishment consists of slightly restricted cellphone privileges and less dipping sauce for the kitten-kabobs and forced viewings of Lynne Cheney in a bikini (which actually is fairly brutal, come to think of it).

You know all this and yet you're not the slightest bit shocked anymore, maybe because you realize this is how corporate politics has always worked, this is the capitalist system's most hypocritical slap to any notion of fairness or justice you may harbor, people going to prison for years for selling small amounts of pot or for having underage gay sex but when multimillionaire Bush-buddy execs get busted with their entire bodies in the cookie jar, well, it's nothing a few high­priced lawyers can't quickly snuff out while helping to broker a six-figure book deal.

You may even sense how it's all connected, the war-that's-not-really-a-war and our rabid oil dependency and the 17 pro-Enron provisions in Cheney's Energy Policy and all those former Enron execs now cruising in high-level posts in the Bush administration. Unworkable multibillion-dollar missile defense plans and National Sanctity of Life Day and PretzelGate. See the thread? Of course you do.

Call it the New American Ennui, caused by one part disingenuous warmongering, one part fervent oil-grubbing, one part residual Clinton-era moral slimeballing, and one huge part Bush WASP mafia election-rigging and pro-corporate anti-everything-else reshuffling. Makes you all numb inside.

Of course Bush will not be impeached for his obvious puppeteering role. Of course Cheney is hunkering down in the bunker, shredding as fast as possible, denying everything. Of course there will be no sweeping reforms or serious restrictions placed on corporate funding of political candidates.

Nor will there be limits set on how many execs an undeserving president can appoint from one company, no limits on how much corporate backstabbing one country should endure. Remember the S&L scandal? The one that cost taxpayers billions and that we're still paying for and will be for years to come? That's OK. No one else does either.

There will be harsh words and furrowed brows and maybe a few laws passed. There will be wrists slapped and apologies made and big dopey shrugs from the Shrubster as he leverages his baffling and war-drunk positive approval rating to dodge the scandal like a slippery hog in a Texas pen.

You don't care about the Enron debacle because if you did, you'd just be disappointed again, hurt and betrayed as justice is thwarted and snuffed out like a candle, leaving you with the urge, yet again, to yank all your money out of the bank and take off for the woods with a case of Grey Goose and some really good kalamata olives and a Leatherman tool and a tent and Auden's collected poems and not come back for a year.


But that just wouldn't be very patriotic at all.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thoughts for the author? Email him.
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, just like a special magic bunny of love. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed daily email column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters/

©2002 SF Gate