WASINGTON, 7 January 2006 — The criminal conviction of high-powered lobbyist Jack Abramoff this week set off the biggest corruption scandal to taint Washington in decades and reminded us that Mark Twain once described Congress as “our only native criminal class.”
Even former Republican leader Newt Gingrich weighed in with disgust: “The Abramoff scandal has to be seen as part of a much larger and deeper problem. It’s not about lobbyist corruption. You can’t have a corrupt lobbyist without a corrupt member or corrupt staff. This was a team effort.” But while GOP leaders scramble to see how the fallout from the Abramoff scandal will affect their party in the upcoming November midterm elections, journalists in town are having a hay-day with the man who has brought them the most satirical fun they’ve had since the Bill Clinton’s Monica scandal.
Following his appearance in court this week, journalists outdid themselves by poking fun at his hat, his coat, his huge weight gain, and what they called his new Orthodox “Jew look.” Ruth Marcus wrote in this week’s Washington Post: The fallen lobbyist described his travails as if — like Job’s — none were of his own making”.
‘All of a sudden, in an almost Jobian fashion, my whole world collapsed,’ says Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew who seemed to flaunt his piety (the Christian right loved it) the way other lobbyists flash their Rolexes.”
Stephen Hirsch in Salon.com had equal fun with the lobbyist: “The picture of Jack Abramoff walking out of a federal courthouse on Tuesday wearing a distinctive fedora is by now iconic. And chances are... you thought he looked like a gangster.What struck me was that Abramoff was wearing my hat, a Borsalino. Tucked tight on his head, pinched even, perfectly symmetrical (if a little deep for my taste), it was immaculate.
“Maybe the contrition Abramoff expressed in his statements was real. Maybe he even recited ‘Baruch Dayan Emes,’ the Jewish blessing you make when you hear really bad news, after he went to court. Maybe he was wearing a yami (a diminutive yarmulke) underneath his fedora. While it’s no secret that he’s an Orthodox if not Torah-observant, or frum Jew, I’ve never seen a picture of him with either a Borsalino or yarmulke before. Why now?” noted Hirsch.
Yesterday, Robin Givhan followed the lead at the Washington Post: “Lobbyist Jack Abramoff has had a full-blown aesthetic meltdown. The once high-flying dealmaker is going down, and there is nothing dignified about the descent.
“After pleading guilty, Abramoff emerged from US District Court in Washington on Tuesday dressed like a crime boss. He could not have appeared more guilty, more menacing and more unsympathetic than if he had walked out wielding a baseball bat and muttering something about so-and-so sleeping with the fishes.” Givhan noted that Abramoff appeared to be dressed for his own personal monsoon.
He had what appeared to be a snap-brim fedora pulled low over his face. Abramoff didn’t just look like a lawbreaker; he looked shadowy, threatening and downright creepy. Was he doing some sort of visual penance for all his transgressions?. There has been some discussion that Abramoff, in his time of stress, has drawn more closely to his faith. Because he is a practicing Orthodox Jew, some have suggested that his black attire and his hat are a reflection of religiosity, and not a homage to Don Vito Corleone. “But when a man emerges from a courthouse looking solemn and grim, his weightlifter shoulders shrouded in a trench coat, his eyes shaded by the brim of a black hat and his lawyer at his side, any signs of God, prayer and “I’m so sorry” are overshadowed by allusions to thuggishness — the organized, conspiratorial, horse’s-head-in-the-bed variety.” Michael Crowley also dissected Abramoff’s character in the New York Times: ”Nearly as shocking as the sums was the coarseness of his e-mail messages, especially given that Abramoff was a devout Orthodox Jew who presented himself publicly as a man of conservative values. About one American Indian tribal client Abramoff had written to partner Michael Scanlon, “These mofos are the stupidest idiots in the land for sure.”
In another e-mail message he wrote, “we need to get some $ from those monkeys!!!!”. But, says Crowley, at the hearing, Abramoff had the look of a condemned man. He would tell me later that the experience reminded him of that ‘scene in ‘Braveheart,’ when he’s brought in on a gurney to be cut up, with the crowd assembled.’ After reading this, one cannot help but wonder how this man can be described as religously devout when he made a career, and plead guity to, “fraud, tax evasion and conospiracy to bribe public offiicals”
