I'm guessing....

denverfandenverfan Posts: 218
edited July 2006 in A Moving Train
That this lady creating this piece of garbage doesn't have a grandmother working the front door of a Wal-Mart because her retirement and pension were squandered because some asshole thought that he needed to be even richer than he already is...

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008611

What a fucking joke!

Thursday, July 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

All deaths are sad, and some are shocking and sad. Ken Lay's this week was both, though I don't suppose it should have been a shock.

Putting aside all judgments and conclusions, all umbrage, outrage and indignation, and all debates on who was most responsible for the Enron scandal--putting all those weighty and legitimate concerns aside--isn't it obvious that Ken Lay died of a broken heart? We forget that people do, or at least I forget, but they do.

His life was broken and would never be healed. Or if it was to be healed it would happen while he was imprisoned, for the rest of his life, with four walls to look at. All was wreckage around him. He died, of a massive coronary. But that can be another way of saying broken heart.

Is this Shakespearian in the sense of being towering and tragic? I don't know. I think it's primal and human. And I think if we were more regularly conscious of the fact that death through sadness happens we'd be better to each other. I'm thinking here of a friend who reflected one day years ago, I cannot recall why, on how hard people are on each other, how we're all complicated little pirates and more sensitive, more breakable, than we know.

He said--I paraphrase--"It's a dangerous thing to deliberately try to hurt someone because it's not possible to calibrate exactly how much hurt you're doing. You can't know in advance the extent of the damage. A snub can leave a wound that lasts a lifetime, a bop on the head with a two-by-four will be laughed off. One must be careful. We'll always hurt others by accident or in a passion but we mustn't do it with deliberation."

We are human beings, and to each other we are not fully knowable. There's a lot of mystery in life. The life force can leave before we even know it's withdrawing.

On TV Wednesday, on cable news, they weren't calling him "CEO scam artist" but, literally, on CNN, "beleaguered businessman." They didn't know how to play the story. To rehearse, on the day of his death, the allegations against Lay and the jury verdict--guilty of fraud and conspiracy--would be . . . ungracious, lacking. But to ignore the scandal--which is after all the reason he is famous, the reason we are reporting his death--is journalistically incoherent. Reporters tried to find a middle ground. Lay came from nowhere, rose high, messed up, fell.
Fair enough.

But part of what happened to him, one of the interesting parts of the sad story, is that it is an illustration of the changing nature of scandal. There has been a huge change in the impact scandal now has on a human life in the modern world.

Once you could get in terrible trouble and just vamoose and find a place to hide. You could lam it, lay low, start over. You could reinvent yourself. You could cross an ocean and go to another continent and begin again.

You could leave the scandal behind you.

You could create a new life by creating a fiction. It is 1794 and you are in fact a farmer's son from Normandy who stole a purse. But you've just arrived in Philadelphia and have taken to announcing that you're a member of the French nobility fleeing the revolution. And they believe you! You work in a store, own a store, found a chain. In time you are the sober scion of an old main line family. Or it's 1930 and you're a socialite who caused a scandal, so you go to the hills of Umbria and begin to call yourself the widow Jones.

You could hide or start over. As late as the 1950s a Blanche Dubois could have confidence her tale of lost love would be believed. She could rely on the kindness of strangers.

But no one's quite a stranger anymore.

Now, with modern media, there's no place to hide. In the age of Google there's an endless pixel trail.

You can't disappear and start over because you can't disappear.

And--I'm serious--there's a sadness to this, a less human, less rich, more constricted and constricting quality to modern life because of it.

The modern media age has leveled the trees behind which people used to hide. If Ken Lay had been found not guilty and gone to live on the most obscure street in the third biggest town in Chad, you know what they'd say as he walked by. "That's the guy that headed the company that stole the money." They have CNN there. They have it everywhere.
Too bad. People need second chances, and thirds, and fourths.

The answer? There is no answer. The lesson is not, "Human beings will have to have fewer scandals and embarrassments," because human beings can't have less scandals and embarrassments. They're human. They'll do what humans do.

The only relief in this area will be here: when every embarrassment is famous for a day and every scandal known worldwide for a week, they'll all start to blend into a big blur. And you can hide in a blur for a while.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

END

Christ, couldn't this article have revolved around anyone other than Lay??? I'm sure some great influential person has passed recently which should have envoked a similar sentiment, and warranted these types of thougts, but LAY...FUCKING CHRIST!
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity but they've always worked for me." Gonzo

'If my fuckin' ex-wife told me to take care of her dog while her and her new boyfriend went to Honolulu, I'd tell her to go fuck herself." -The Dude

Whisky Drinker, Non-Hunter from Denver.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • boxwine_in_hellboxwine_in_hell Posts: 1,263
    Wow nice novel man. You could have been much more succinct and said. "Lay was a scumbag." And by the way he didn't die of a broken heart he died of a black heart.
    one foot in the door
    the other foot in the gutter
    sweet smell that they adore
    I think I'd rather smother
    -The Replacements-
  • Yeah, but she called us little pirates... and for that I like her...

    arrrrgh matey!
  • denverfandenverfan Posts: 218
    Wow nice novel man. You could have been much more succinct and said. "Lay was a scumbag." And by the way he didn't die of a broken heart he died of a black heart.

    Did you read what she's saying??? She's letting Lay off and making excuses...It's the medias fault for his death...Shes a journalist in the Wall Street Journal! FUCKING CHRIST!!!
    "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity but they've always worked for me." Gonzo

    'If my fuckin' ex-wife told me to take care of her dog while her and her new boyfriend went to Honolulu, I'd tell her to go fuck herself." -The Dude

    Whisky Drinker, Non-Hunter from Denver.
  • boxwine_in_hellboxwine_in_hell Posts: 1,263
    She's entitled to her opinion, even though it's wrong.
    one foot in the door
    the other foot in the gutter
    sweet smell that they adore
    I think I'd rather smother
    -The Replacements-
  • _Crazy_Mary__Crazy_Mary_ Posts: 1,299
    I think I'll head down to wal-mart today.
    I really screwed that up. I really Schruted it.
  • slambooieslambooie Posts: 11
    Wow these boards are full of judgemental partially- educated bainshees.

    But I guess if someone has a different opinion that you, meltdown incomming!
  • mammasanmammasan Posts: 5,656
    slambooie wrote:
    Wow these boards are full of judgemental partially- educated bainshees.

    But I guess if someone has a different opinion that you, meltdown incomming!

    Aren't you being a judgemental partially-educated banshee, you spelled it wrong, for making the comment you made.
    "When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads." - Ron Paul
  • boxwine_in_hellboxwine_in_hell Posts: 1,263
    What's a bainshee?
    one foot in the door
    the other foot in the gutter
    sweet smell that they adore
    I think I'd rather smother
    -The Replacements-
  • boxwine_in_hellboxwine_in_hell Posts: 1,263
    you gotta love someone who calls someone else partially educated and then proceeds to butcher the spelling of a word.....It's quite "ironik".
    one foot in the door
    the other foot in the gutter
    sweet smell that they adore
    I think I'd rather smother
    -The Replacements-
  • callencallen Posts: 6,388
    represents a large portion of the wealthy in America.......

    "The have's have not a fcken clue".

    He was so out of touch with reality...along with his cronies.
    10-18-2000 Houston, 04-06-2003 Houston, 6-25-2003 Toronto, 10-8-2004 Kissimmee, 9-4-2005 Calgary, 12-3-05 Sao Paulo, 7-2-2006 Denver, 7-22-06 Gorge, 7-23-2006 Gorge, 9-13-2006 Bern, 6-22-2008 DC, 6-24-2008 MSG, 6-25-2008 MSG
  • mammasanmammasan Posts: 5,656
    What's a bainshee?

    I'm guessing he/she meant banshee but was too busy mocking someone elses intelligence/education to spell correctly.
    "When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads." - Ron Paul
  • keeponrockinkeeponrockin Posts: 7,446
    I played 'Soon Forget' today in his memory. I hope Ed dedicates it to him tonight.
    Believe me, when I was growin up, I thought the worst thing you could turn out to be was normal, So I say freaks in the most complementary way. Here's a song by a fellow freak - E.V
  • denverfandenverfan Posts: 218
    I think I'll head down to wal-mart today.


    Say hi to all the old folks this fucking looser ripped off!
    "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity but they've always worked for me." Gonzo

    'If my fuckin' ex-wife told me to take care of her dog while her and her new boyfriend went to Honolulu, I'd tell her to go fuck herself." -The Dude

    Whisky Drinker, Non-Hunter from Denver.
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