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My last use of this space was to tell a story about a justice of the Supreme
Court and a character named "Chaney" whom I identified as the Vice President
of the United States. That’s who I thought he was, but it turns out there is
some question about it. A lot of people have been complaining that I got it
all wrong and the guy I really must have meant was a man named "Cheney" who
they claim is the actual Vice President. What has happened to "Chaney" I don’t
know, but he’s out and "Cheney" is in. It’s a shame in a way because I kind
of liked "Chaney" and thought he was a pretty good Veep. I wish him luck
wherever he is.
All this has hurt my credibility. My spelling has always won me respect
wherever I go. I don’t want to brag, but it’s on a level with Tiger Woods’
putting or Larry Bird’s foul shooting. Imagine my mortification then when I blew
the name of the No. 2 man in the government of the United States. There must
have been some deep underlying fissure in my mental magma chamber to have
caused this misfire. Maybe it was a Freud thing, I thought. Subconsciously maybe
I had been thinking of Lon Chaney Sr. and Lon Chaney Jr. They were both in
the movies. Senior was famous for playing the Phantom of the Opera and the
Hunchback of Notre Dame. Junior had glamour too. His best role was as the
Wolfman, for which he grew saber teeth and hairy palms. I had identified the Vice
President with horror films, had I? He reminded me of movie monsters, did he?
Does the FBI know about this?
I had to pull myself together. Maybe there was a more innocent explanation.
Maybe it wasn’t those other Chaneys at all. Maybe I had confused the Veep’
s name with that of Don Chaney, the coach of the Knicks. Don had been in the
papers a lot lately. Not with the most favorable associations though -- in
fact he had just been fired for losing eighteen games in a row or something
like that. Still it could have happened to anyone. The Veep, or his fans, or
the FBI, couldn’t get too worked up about me confusing him with an unlucky
coach. It wasn’t the same as a malignant hunchback or a halitotic wolf. I could
face the world again. And I would never mess up anyone’s name again. It
shouldn’t have happened to begin with. The net has a tendency to chew up the
stuff you feed it and spit it out again unrecognizably, so I’m usually careful
with what I write. I will be even more so. Cheney, you’re safe with me.
I hope all this hasn’t detracted too much from the message I started out to
send in my last piece, about the rewards to be found in transferring the
Supreme Court to the wide open spaces where the coyotes howl and the wind blows
free. In actuality, just to the interior of the country instead of the periphery,
to put them more in touch with the population as opposed to the political
types who infest Washington. Civilization is as rampant there as on the East
Coast and the coyotes have been suppressed. In the calm and bracing atmosphere
of the Great West the justices’ minds will free themselves from the
metropolitan cobwebs and begin to work more quickly and to see things more clearly. A
new wave of enlightenment will sweep over the Court and decisions will be
produced that will astonish the world with their ripe wisdom and deep insight.
Instead of fighting the Washington traffic and breathing its carcinogenic air
they will inhale great gulps of healthy oxygen which will stimulate the brain
cells now decaying in the fetid atmosphere of the reclaimed swamp on which
Washington is built. Do it now, boys, there isn’t a moment to lose.
To descend from the national level to the local one, I give you a case that’s
transfixed the population of Long Island, where I live. The Executive, or
boss of Nassau County, which may be the largest suburban government in America,
is a man named Tom Suozzi, elected two years ago as a reform Democrat to
replace the Republicans who had bankrupted the county by heavy spending on anything
they thought the voters wanted, without worrying about finding the money to
pay for these handouts. This was because one of the things the voters wanted
which didn’t involve spending, was low taxes.
For some unknown reason Suozzi hired as his Deputy Executive a man named
Sylver, who had no previous experience in county government. Last year the
Republicans, who, from being irresponsible wastrels had morphed themselves into
guardians of the public purse, found that Mr. Sylver had been abusing his county
credit card by charging $15,000 in personal expenses to it. Sylver resigned
under fire in late November. Before resigning though, he found the time to fire
a woman who worked in his office. The firing didn’t last long because the
woman immediately complained that the reason for it was her resistance to his
sexual advances. The chief personnel officer of the county flew into action and
almost before the day was over the firing had been rescinded and replaced
with a promotion and a transfer to another department where she would have a job
paying $50,000 a year, an increase of $15,000 over what she had been making.
There was one hitch, however: she was required to sign a confidentiality
agreement barring disclosure of the deal to any agency handling discrimination
complaints or to any court of any kind, federal, state or local.
This week word of this arrangement leaked out and now the Republicans had
something they could really get their teeth into. They called it "buying
silence" and they accused Suozzi of masterminding a coverup to protect himself and
his administration and save his subordinate from the consequences of his
actions, which were pretty bad and even forcible at times according to the
complainant. The Democrats protested, but they had to go along with an agreement to
turn the whole matter over to the district attorney.
If any charges come out of this, it’s hard to see how Suozzi would not be
named. No one would believe he didn’t know about every detail of the case and
approve the way in which it was handled. Unlike Martha Stewart and Enron and
other cases where the facts are foggy at best and can be seen in a different
light by different people, this one is simple and straightforward. It doesn’t
require a lot of deep pondering, just a normal appetite for a good crime story
involving reputable citizens of high standing in the community. You know,
Dominick Dunne stuff even if no one involved is a millionaire. TV has made it
crystal clear that this is what the folks want. Lt. Colombo only investigates
classy crimes committed in mansions and so does Angela Lansbury, and so do the
"Law and Order" people. Nobody’s interested in some grubby stuff going on in
the ghetto. And what do you think they watch in the ghetto? That’s right, the
Lieutenant and Angela and Law and Order and the others who specialize in
rattling the skeletons in the family treasure room and don’t waste their time with
the piggy banks of the working class.
These shows, and this case, offer us the comfort of encountering familiar
elements most of the time. I mean, what would a sex scandal be without someone
fixing the girl up with a job to keep her quiet? Where have we seen that one
before? Wasn’t there a girl named Lewinsky and…?
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