This Was the Species that Was

It may become fashionable, years and decades hence, to blame Francis Ford Coppola for popularizing the crime family drama (never mind that The Godfather and sequels have distant roots in all kinds of noir flicks and criminal character studies... think Jimmy Cagney and his ma in White Heat). But the apotheosis of pomo mob stories is surely The Sopranos, which is fixin' to spurt its last real soon. And good riddance, because besides providing idle, cable-ready, rich Americans with Quality Crime Drama for eight years, it has also beaten, trod, and machete'd a path through the jungles of the American consciousness such that people today expect mob behavior at every turn and are trained to feel pathos for those exhibiting it, despite the fact that the latter are self-serving thieves and homicidal sociopaths.

Witness, for a modest example, the Organized Crime Racket of the American Presidency (OCRAP). Aye, Lewis "Scooter" Libby shall scoot off to the pen for 30 months (assuming his people can't figure a way to buy the appeals court decision or a pardon from the Head Fuckstick hisself). That's as it should be, though I personally can't conceive of two and a half years' imprisonment for Cheney's perjurious former Chief of Staff being decried as a harsh sentence, as opposed to the "leniency" that was requested (da fuck did they want, a stern talking to?). True, Libby is certainly not the person primarily responsible for the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press. But he was part of the sick, disgusting, lying, corrupt, vindictive, outright evil organization that is OCRAP, which sought to punish former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for his criticism of OCRAP's Iraq war policy by calling a general, protracted international hit out on his spy wife.

From AP: "Mr. Libby was the poster child for all that has gone wrong in this terrible war," said defense attorney Theodore Wells. "He has fallen from public grace. It is a tragic fall, a tragic fall." No, Mr. Wells, Mr. Libby is the poster child for an administration with no governing moral code, an administration that thinks that, because it has the reins of the crime racket and the capos and soldiers and general muscle to back it up, it can behave in any way it damn well pleases. That has been Mr. Bush's attitude since taking office, shrugging off world (and domestic) opinion on virtually every issue whenever it suited him or enriched his corporate cronies in the racket. It was the attitude that allowed the Vice President, or Karl Rove, aka Satan Himself, to order the hit on Plame without any consideration for honor, justice, or human life.

And now Bush and his crowd are crying to the press that Libby's sentence is a tragedy for his family. See? This is absolutely organized crime behavior: Admit nothing, not even when they've caught you with the smoking pistol or with the crack pipe in your mouth or, as rudepundit might say, with your dick in some Iraqi child's eye socket. Libby goes to gaol and does his time quietly, never having implicated his masters in their crimes, and will be rewarded grandly upon his exit. Just wait. Meanwhile, the guiltier assholes don't even have to pretend to honor the public trust that Libby broke or shame or even censure him for said breaking. Just: Poor Libby's family. Sigh.

In short: This OCRAP Administration is absolutely amoral, absolutely evil, absolutely illegal, and needs to be taken down or taken over NOW.