Watching the corporate media feast on the Christmas scraps tossed them by Patrick Fitzgerald in the form of the Blagojevich scandal evokes scenes from the "Rites of Saturn." Though the ritual is associated with careless pleasures, Roman potteries with their grisly human heads remind us that as winter approached and torches were lit against the darkness of Saturn’s year-end chaos throats were bled upon the harvest god's altar. As the days grew lean, life reverted to its native state of misrule and madness.
Seneca the Younger, describing Rome in December of 50 AD: "Loose reins are given to public dissipation; everywhere you may hear the sound of great preparations, as if there were some real difference between the days devoted to Saturn and those for transacting business..."
If there is a single reporter who was genuinely surprised that an Illinois governor would seek to peddle his power then a child in grade school is surely qualified to join the Washington press corps. Indeed should such illicit trading be prosecuted evenly there is a certain governor recently aspired to be vice-president who richly deserves the breathless scrutiny being lavished upon poor dumb, and possibly unhinged, Rod Blago. It seems that to cheer our dark and dismal Christmas the corporate media would like us believe that "quid pro quo" is somehow a rare art unique to Chicago and not "business as usual", (or at least anything to keep their bosses' exposed cupidity out of the headlines.)
Now that a second Bush presidency has plunged us into another major recession the masters of our financial universe are desperate that we not catch on to the fact that for the last (two hundred) thirty years our country's governance has by in large been a criminal enterprise. What honest member of Congress would hand the very scoundrels who just got through fleecing the public of another 700 billion dollars and then fail to inquire to whom or to what did the Federal Reserve just quietly dole out over $2 trillion crisp new bills? Oh, but winter's almost here-- there are lean and dark days coming-- so let's pretend and make merry--off with that rascal Blago's head!-- and may his corpse leave its rotten stench upon Emmanuel and his smug St. Obama.
Before Blago There was Spitzer
It's one thing to pretend you are fighting corruption by indicting the hired hands (a la Rudy) and something else to attempt to make one's name by exposing the Lords of High Finance as did our zealous New York governor. Spitzer was stopped, thanks to his apparent arrogant belief that Saturnalia can be pursued year-round by a moral crusader.
Because of that inane sexual indulgence, Spitzer's expose of Wall Street corruption, a presumptuous inquisition that ended with a $1.4 billion settlement and the disgrace for the banking world's leading figures has been mostly forgotten save by the gangsters and front men facing thousands of shareholder lawsuits. Lawsuits I suspect that are about to vanish or be tactfully settled.
Thanks to Mr. Spitzer's reckless ambition, we now know that the chain of corruption leads right to the top. Yet despite such indisputable evidence that the thieves were guarding the cupboards our discreet and upstanding public servants who-- unlike that foul-mouthed Governor Blago would never dream of peddling a senate seat-- have handed those very same banks the dwindled remains of our children's college funds and our old-age pensions.Against this breadth and depth of corruption it is possible to forgive poor Eliot for failing to soberly observe the line between normal behavior and the mindless excess of Saturnalia. And surely only during such a careless time as the mad days of Saturn would politicians presumably less deluded than Palin and Blago attempt to pimp their soiled garments of ethics and decency. But such is the harvest grown from avarice and greed: gamblers squander the fruits of real labor while our drunken Lords of Misrule clap their hands on the nation's grave and dance naked.
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