Modern American political history is defined by petty criminals.
My mother and I normally find ourselves on the same side of political debates, but we love each other enough to completely avoid any discussion of our religious differences. That is why she quickly gained my attention when she called this morning from the house on Bayou Robert to announce that she is now attending Mass daily. Here in New Orleans at the other end of the line, I rolled my eyes, figuring the time had probably come again for another of those much-dreaded, once-a-decade pushes at Saving Jim's Soul.
But she had something else on her mind.
"It's Bush I have to thank," she told me.
This got my attention.
"I told Father Ryan that after Mass just today", she went on, "but he looked at me funny, because he knows your father and I are yellow-dog Democrats." (By way of explanation, Yellow Dog in the deep south identifies a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, indicating that such a person would vote for a yellow dog if he ran under the party banner.)
Another dramatic pause ensues as she let this formidable collision of religion and politics settle into my consciousness.
"But Father Ryan would have been even more upset if he knew what I was praying for at church these last weeks."
Pause and a breath.
"Okayyyy " I said. I knew she wanted to be led down the road to whatever it was she was going to say. It was my duty to give the appropriate prompts.
"Well, after all that has been going on in Washington, and the terrible things that have been happening here and elsewhere because of our government, I have been praying steadfastly for one thing. I know it's wrong and I know it is not logistically or even legally possible, but I have been praying for it."
She paused again, and I could feel her looking at the phone, willing me to do my part.
I did. "Annndddd "
"I have been praying that God would somehow bring back the adulterer."
Jim Gabour is an award-winning film producer, writer and director living in New Orleans. His website is here
Also by Jim Gabour in openDemocracy:
"A New Orleans diary" (February 2006)
"New Orleans ode to carnival"
(February 2006)
"Out of order"
(March 2006)
"The deliveryman's story" (March 2006)
"An electoral storm in New Orleans"
(April 2006)
"The choice is not choice" (May 2006)
A city adrift
Mom always admired the fact that Clinton's sins harmed no one but himself. She feels that this is the highest level of politician that we can realistically hope for in this country.
History does nothing but reinforce her belief, from the legend of our initial president George Washington cutting down a tree though admitting his "crime" to Richard M Nixon's trifling burglary, an act that brought an end to a tortured and corrupt tenure, another decade that saw American lives reduced to fodder for governmental power squabbles.
Now comes this fellow from New Orleans, US Representative William Jefferson, a long-time office-holder who for years has pushed the envelope on inserting his family onto governmental payrolls. His sister Betty is one of the city's much-derided assessors, and herself has been the subject of numerous investigations concerning the use of her office for personal gain.
Jeffersons daughter Jamila, with the ink on her law diploma barely dry, immediately ran for public office though she had no experience whatsoever in government, other than as an aide watching her fathers machinations. She failed in that election, despite an enormous influx of campaign cash from dads cronies, but with even more money she won in a second try at state representative.
Jamila then immediately allowed her father to hire her as the lawyer to organise the shell company through which he would funnel his bribe money. For that, she received tens of thousands of dollars in fees, much more than her annual official salary. She was still hanging in the wings waiting for the next political spoil when the Feds revealed their investigation.
Representative Jefferson may not now be able to support her next attempt.
Although the search of his Capitol office by the justice department is said to have precipitated a "constitutional crisis", and in spite of the intervention of the president to seal all the confiscated material, the overwhelming quantity and quality of evidence against the man would seem to lead his constituents to doubt his veracity.
Caught red-handed, as was our first president, he will not admit to the cutting of the Washingtonian cherry-tree.
This may be due to lack of imagination as much as personal avarice.
His homes, and those of his cohorts, have now been raided by the justice department on numerous occasions. One of the first legal intrusions turned up $10,000 in packets of $100 bills, neatly wrapped and concealed inside a food freezer: an amusing but hardly original method of safeguarding one's totally-legal family fortune. Now, months later, we are told that up in Washington DC another freezer was discovered to hold $90,000, the same amount of money that was earlier handed over to Jefferson by an informant in front of FBI cameras and recorders. Except that now the bills were suitably chilled and preserved for future long-term spending.
There is more to this story, but the backdrop makes the substantial legal case seem trivial.
The backdrop is New Orleans, now a few thousand homes clustered along the banks of The Mississippi River, a human settlement totally at the mercy of an already-dysfunctional government and a failed infrastructure. A place where the pipes and lines that feed the city are cracked and bleeding, worsening an already bad situation. Forty percent of the city is still without hope of electricity and when a neighborhood is finally turned on, fires erupt at random. The sewerage-and-water board now pumps three million gallons of water daily to get one million gallons into the homes of residents; which means that every day, two million gallons leak out to further erode the already tenuous soil base which supports the city. Only 2,000 of 22,000 pre-Katrina businesses have returned.
And in a few days a new hurricane season will be upon us. We are at a critical point in our history and our lives.
William Jefferson represents this city in Washington. He is no longer concerned with his constituents' plight as much as his own, even while (Republican) George W Bush protects (Democrat) William Jefferson's rights to suppress evidence of wrongdoing.
Barring prosecution for his own assault on the constitution, Bush is guaranteed almost three more years in office.
Jefferson may have considerably less time in public service, especially if additional caches of frozen assets are discovered.
My mother continues to pray.
For the return of the adulterer.
