Prison Quads & Jeering Squads: Scooter Libby, Paris Hilton & Abu Ghraib

Scooter Libby faces 30 months in Gentlemen’s Prison, and Paris Hilton is in Powder-Puff Prison… so it might be said.

Prison today may mean nearly nothing for what I’d call ‘gold-collar crime.’

Yet, I’ve been wondering with an analyst’s eye, about all the hooting, clapping and applauding around Miss Hilton going to jail. This rousing currently sweeps much of TV and radio. I wonder too about the seeming ‘lone gunman’ spin that asks us to believe that Scooter Libby apparently masterminded all his deeds with no help from other guilty mouths and fingers, but just all by himself… I see all the jeering and high fives and Yes!’s going on around his case too.

Setting aside for the moment what misdeeds each has been found guilty of doing … I wonder more so, does jeering at people in or off to prison occur, not because people can be gotten to rave or knee-jerk react to anything the media pulls their chains toward… but is it because our culture has come down with a ‘laughing depression,’ insofar as much of the public has lost faith in a genuine gravitas of the law being faithfully enacted by our leaders? Some of my relatives who grew up under Communist rule said that when you have nothing for justice, there is only bitter laughing left to the people.

As I read the daily blogs, which most often carry the most thoughtful of the thoughtful… it appears that many citizens are now as suspicious of many in the judiciary as they once were of alleged criminals for which the prosecution had just produced ten smoking guns each. Is that why so many are jeering? Not jeering Justice, but jeering those who say they carry it?

I don’t know that it’s a civilizing function to have some news outlets lead the charge of taunts and mocking of prisoners or those about to be incarcerated. In those public arenas, it effectively pre-empts timely exchanges of thought. But maybe that’s what it comes to. TV is the new/old coliseum. And no one’s supposed to think. That’s not what they are there for.

Yet, it can’t be that we ought be left to only mulishly say, ‘Well, they got what they deserved,’ ‘They asked for it,’ “Schadenfreude at last,’ ‘They wanted to be famous, now they’re infamous, ha ha,’ etc., and other imitations of some commentators.

Public jeering is contagious, leaping out of the arena set for it and taking hold other places… like fire, it jumps to whatever else is also dry. Not comparing the Libby/ Hilton offenses to those attributed to people being held at Abu Ghraib, but trying to isolate the phenomenon of jeering at and dehumanizing prisoners … I wonder, when some media outlets promote active disdain of prisoners, no matter who the prisoners are… (I note it seems there’s as much on-air disdain for starlets and actors equal to that given, say for instance, to Timothy McVeigh) I wonder where that modeling of mocking prisoners finds its level to settle in our culture. Does it spread only to those who are least thoughtful, who then join in? Or is it otherwise.

The jeering at and ridiculing of males being held at Abu Ghraib, and not for just a day, but on and on… carried more than a thoughtless quality. It was ‘thought out.’ It had a modus operandi to it. Those in charge forced the detained men to twist their naked bodies around one another like some monstrous Gustav Vigeland sculpture from Hell, and then photographed them for ‘trophies.’ In their own defenses, those who perpetrated, participated in this, variously initially indicated, it was only entertainment and the prisoners were only getting their just desserts.

I’m not of the mind that comic books, Rock & Roll and kids in black lipstick imperil civilization. And I wonder what, if anything, leaks along the capillaries of modern culture, seeping into those whose minds are most porous, delivering a constant I.V. of how to be the least of what it means to be humane with one’s justice.

Which brings me back to wondering if instead of jeering Libby and Hilton, we aren’t really jeering the current state of Justice in our nation. Though some might say, both, and all, our current kind of ‘justice’ with loss of habeas corpus across the board, and wire-taps, seemingly at will… has turned into a ‘personalized justice’ that is high on hubris, and very high in the hierarchy of government. The current regime has ripped the blindfold off the real Justice, and forced her scales to use ‘the butcher’s thumb technique’ to mis-weigh so much.

What shall be done with those accused of anything in our nation today? Especially those accused wrongfully out of personal avarice, revenge, dislike, or because the cameras are on the accusers and they want to make it look good to the public so they can continue to live like kings?

And what about all of us? Criminal Justice, without the Justice part, will make us all into criminals eventually… just for living our lives, having ‘thoughts.’ It’s only a matter of time, especially if there’s inordinate time spent jeering, and not near enough pushing for honest and equal jurisprudence. The saying goes, “Justice is Blind, and Wisdom tips the balance”: Though Justice may have been conscripted by a madness that’s run loose across our land way beyond its expiration date, the Wisdom is still ours.