… When a politician is caught with his hand in the cookie jar, instead of inciting moral outrage, it merely provides comic relief. And Mr. Jefferson is only the latest to become a laughing stock amongst a presumed (Congressional) den of thieves.
This is the cynicism I expressed last May in my commentary on the most brazen crook to disgrace the U.S. Congress in decades. My cynicism stemmed from the fact that the FBI not only caught Democrat William Jefferson on videotape accepting marked bills under his dinner table at the Ritz Hotel, but later found those bills stored amongst $90,000 similar bills in the freezer of his Washington, DC townhouse.
Yet, when Jefferson resisted all attempts by Democratic leaders to force him to resign – for the sake of the Party, I had no doubt that his mostly black constituents (think a district of OJ jurors) would vindicate his impudence by re-electing him this fall.
Meanwhile, in his defense, Jefferson insisted that he was being politically persecuted and that there were two sides to this story. But, since he evoked all the sympathy of a skunk at a garden party, here’s how I suggested Jefferson should explain being caught with his hand in the cookie jar…as it were:
…since neither factual nor legal arguments would do much to exonerate him, Jefferson should do what most black scoundrels do when caught in a legal vice-grip: play the race card. And, in this regard, perhaps Jefferson could argue that – since most blacks have good reasons to distrust banks – the other side of this story is that, in fact, there’s absolutely nothing suspicious about hiding his cash beneath his mattress…or even storing it in his freezer.
As it turned out, however, he did not have to be quite so clever to save his job. Because Jefferson spent the entire campaign simply stoking the historic distrust most blacks have of the FBI (which attempted to frame Dr Martin Luther King after all). And it paid off big time. Because, in a run-off election on Saturday against (black) Louisiana state Rep. Karen Carter – who was fated to lose because all of the few white voters in this district supported her – Jefferson won by a wide margin to retain his seat in Congress.
But saving his job is one thing. Beating FBI charges against him is quite another. Indeed, I suspect Jefferson’s victory will prove pyrrhic at best. Because it only means that when he’s indicted (within months) on federal bribery charges, his arrest as a sitting Congressman will be all the more politically embarrassing for Democratic leaders – who just regained control of Congress by promising to rid it of corruption.
Related Articles:
Rep. William Jefferson: The Congressman, $100,000 and his freezer…
The Abramoff bribes: “The biggest corruption scandal in a generation”, but
Congressman William Jefferson
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.