The Thrill Of It All

When the Senate obeyed Wall Street's command last week and created a new and improved bailout bill, I heard Mitch McConnel serve up what I knew was destined to be the core narrative about the whole bailout mess: now is not the time to point fingers; it doesn't matter how we got here, but how we solve the problem; don't play the blame game; we must join together in a spirit of bipartisanship and pull America out of the crisis, blah blah. You've all heard it a million times. The government says it whenever they've fucked something up and want to cover their asses. Sure enough, I heard that meme drifting around the cable talkies a few times yesterday when it became clear that the bailout wasn't working as advertised. George W. Bush tacked on his own addition, "we must be patient." But there was another addition as well. It came over CNBC, that paradise for slick "experts" who always get things wrong but somehow keep their cushy jobs anyway (thus mysteriously defying the free market laws they all worship like scripture). Someone being interviewed was dutifully repeating the script about avoiding that petty little blame game and working on productive solutions intstead, etc., etc. Then he said that, besides, assigning blame right now "won't do any good anyway."

To avoid stroke, I won't launch into all the things that piss me off about this arrogant, condescending line of bullshit that is a transparent effort to let the guilty go free at our expense. Instead I'll offer a simple refutation to the idea that casting blame won't do any good. My answer to Mr. Two or Three Million Dollar a Year Pundit and his smug fat face is this: Oh, but it will do good, it will!

True, it might not solve the problem. It might not produce any tangible results that you can slap on a graph or a chart and yack about all week, but it will do good nonetheless. It will feel good.

We have plenty of time for bipartisanship. We have plenty of time for productive solutions. But for now, let's indulge in petty finger pointing. Let's cast blame. Let's isolate the greedy bastards responsible for this catastrophe and lock them up in stocks in the public square so they can be pelted with dog shit and rotten vegetables. It would be, I think, what left-wing egghead elitists call "cathartic." It would put us all in a more rational, bipartisan mood.

What quantitative good does the Superbowl do? The World Series? A good stiff drink after a tough day? Arguably none, but nobody claims that's a reason to take them away. They just help keep society functioning smoothly. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church allowed something called All Fool's Day (April Fool's Day), during which the people could openly mock the hypocrisy and stupidity of their rulers, including Church officials. It was harmless fun that gave the peasants a chance to let off steam. It kept things together in the long run. Let's have our own celebration and call it Market Correction Day. We can kick off the festivities by pouring a bucket of warm cow shit over Hank Paulson's head while he reads from Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal or recites Goldman Sach's Mission Statement to the tune of the Marsellaise.

So in that spirit, it was satisfying to hear the following little factoid today. Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, was working out at the gym after the announcement that Lehman was going under. He was on a treadmill wearing a heart monitor, presumably because lying and extortion is stressful work that may cause high blood pressure. Somebody at the gym recognized him, walked over and clocked him in the face, knocking him out cold. Maybe that's why he showed up to the hearings yesterday sporting what appeared to be a brand new pair of front teeth.

Nobody questions fucking for the pure pleasure of it (well, almost nobody). Why should we crow about stripping some criminals of their loot and publicly humiliating them for no other reason than the pure thrill of it all?