Get Thee to a Nunnery, or Face the Rap
January 26th, 2006 |
| Photo by Glynn Wilson |
| Deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy contemplates answers to reporter’s questions… |
It’s hard to blame a man who comes from nothing and makes something of himself for turning to God when all the world turns against him.
For all of the flaws of George W. Bush, this is the factor that sustains him with his supporters through the thick fog of war.
Perhaps a brave but wrong man of the South who is not afraid to pray in public can be forgiven.
But a snake oil salesman like Richard Scrushy? I guess he constitutes a different case entirely.
In the old South, a duke of a man like George W. would be pitied, not made king. In the New South, he is allowed to lead the nation into war because there is no one else around with the blood lineage to rise to the throne.
In the old South, a man pretending to be king like Richard Scrushy would have been tarred and feathered and run out of town on a long, pine rail. In the New South, in an odd twist of modern politics, he is tried over and over again in federal court.
Not having been around Birmingham much during Mr. Scrushy’s rise and fall, I was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt and let a jury decide his fate. All of the allegations about manipulating the jury pool by donating money to black churches was still not laid out convincingly enough to lead me to join the mob at his lynching.
Then I watched with a slack jaw the other day as Mr. Scrushy and his Christian bride spent an hour on WOTM making the case for creationism against evolution - on television.
At one point he even said, I kid you not, “there is more proof” for the biblical myth of creationism “than evolution.”
Let’s review: Burying Intelligent Design: It’s Intelligent Evolution People.
I have been reminded of Mark Twain since first encountering the Scrushy story, covering his trial for the New York Times. There was something about him that reminded me of the “rightful King of France” in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Remember the disappeared Dauphin, “Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette?”
I can’t get the picture out of my head of a raft on the Mississippi River and the tall talk of a salesman through and through, a Shakespearean actor indeed, on the run from Southerners who got conned.
“Out with you, Jim, and set her loose!,” Huck shouted when he and his runaway slave friend thought they had shaken the king and the duke and tried to high-tail it down the river on the raft. “Glory be to goodness, we’re shut of them!”
My relatives from St. Clair County would have said, “we’re shit of them,” but no matter.
Get thee to a nunnery, indeed - or face the rap music in a federal prison.
As for king George, would someone please donate some money to this Web site so we can buy a few more 19-inch TVs to blow out every time he makes a speech or holds a news conference?
If I had a bucket of tar, some feathers and a long, pine rail, I would make another trip to Washington and visit the White House myself.
Where, oh where, has the riotous indignation gone in Alabama against the federal government? Have we finally forgotten the War Between the States?
Perhaps a certain commentator was right in the last election cycle. The pious South has finally won the Civil War.
Watch for the return of the convict-lease system in the next election cycle.
Or maybe with enough of a majority, the Neo-Monarchy Party, otherwise known as the Republican Party, might just feel confident enough to bring back the debate over slavery.
Hey, they had slaves in the old testament, didn’t they? If it says it’s OK in the “good book,” it must be alright with the Allmighty, eh?
This is, afterall, a “different” Republican Party - not exactly the party of Lincoln.
Hey Judge Roy Moore, what do you say? Are you fer it or agin it?
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| Photo by Glynn Wilson |
| Deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy takes questions from the media in Montgomery… |
