Following the John Rowland guilty verdict, a great number of
Connecticut’s left of center media adepts were popping champagne corks. Colin
McEnroe, whose Christian sympathies appear to have withered on the vine, was
not among them:
“So the sentence he [Rowland] will get is implicitly
heartbreaking unless you factor in your own outrage at the way things went down
in 2004, when a charming (and easily charmed) old softy named Judge Peter
Dorsey handed Rowland a year when 5 to 8 would have been generous.
“So I had a glass of red wine at the end of this day, but
not a split of champagne.”
Mr. McEnroe also let it be known he was outraged that he was
let go from WTIC talk radio some years ago after having given the station
fourteen of the best years of his life, and so…
“WTIC was hoping Rowland would be cleared. The opposite has
happened. If an underling had handled things so horribly, with such disastrous
consequences for the company, the underling would be fired. Management rarely
plays a comparable price for its dreadful judgment.
“Of course, maybe
ownership will just dump the station.”
Well now, WTIC did let Mr. Rowland go after he had been formally identified as a co-conspirator back in April. Mr. McEnroe was let go, one must suppose, not because he had
been indicted for crimes, but rather because his audience was not large enough
to bring in the Bennies. Until he draped a noose around his own neck and
invited Connecticut's left of center media to yank on the rope, Mr. Rowland’s
audience likely may have been larger and more attentive than Mr. McEnroe’s.
Truly does Genghis Khan say that the most intense joy a man
may have is to dance on the dead body of his enemy.
Ghengis McEnroe is not the only one dancing on the corpse of
Mr. Rowland.
Nearly every lede introducing nearly every story concerning
Mr. Rowland’s corruption trial referred to the Grand Jury indicted Rowland as
“former Governor John Rowland,” which was true enough.
However, the criminal indicted by the Star Chamber Grand
Jury was a journalist, like radio talk show host Colin McEnroe, not a
politician; as such, Mr. Rowland was in no position to dispense “political
favors,” as that expression is commonly understood by the virtuous opponents of
corruption. As a former, felonious governor, Mr. Rowland could not, for
instance, have provided Lisa Wilson Foley with a contract that would benefit
her business. A day following the announcement of the jury verdict, the
Hartford Courant ran a story on its front page above the fold, “Jumoke Work Given To Relatives.” According to the story, Jumoke, a charter school in Hartford, “directed more
than a million dollars in construction work to the husband of one of its
executives.” The nepotistic payments “included
at least $85,000 in state grant money used to renovate a Victorian mansion and
convert its second floor into an apartment later occupied by the charter
group's longtime leader, Michael M. Sharpe. The apartment, built in 2012 to
Sharpe's specifications, featured a new $12,000 master bathroom with a custom
glass shower door.”
The collapse of Jumoke is a case of politicians
taking care of politicians – or themselves – in a one party town in which
Democrats and state prosecutors regularly avert their eyes from political
corruption.
Not a politician, Mr. Rowland could and did provide Lisa
Wilson Foley with favorable publicity. Had most ledes prior to the guilty
verdict rendered by the jury read “former radio talk show host John Rowland,”
Mr. McEnroe might have known that WTIC had let Mr. Rowland go long before he
had been formally convicted by a jury.
Mr. McEnroe was not the only media personality bumping fists
after the jury had returned a verdict that may send a former radio talk show
host to prison for as many years as will satisfy current radio talk show hosts
who think he was pampered by a solicitous judge the first time Mr. Rowland,
then a governor with a promising political career, fell from the sun, his wax
wings dissolved by an awakened and enlightened media.
Tom Dudchick, the proprietor of the indispensable “Capitol
Report,” a news aggregator, is a master at headlining. Here are the headlines
from “Capitol Report” on the day after Mr. Rowland was found guilty of all the
charges brought against him:
Lots of fist bumping there, a veritable shower of champagne
corks first hitting then falling from the ceiling.
Perusing the “Capitol Report” headlines, one notices that current
Speaker of the State House of Representatives, Brendan “The Shark” Sharkey, has
taken to heart the suggestion proffered by Mr. McEnroe:“I certainly think [WTIC's owners]
have some explaining to do to their listening public. ... I think the listening
public should be demanding an explanation and federal communications
authorities should be looking into this, as well,’ Sharkey said.”
Given the concerted attack on WTIC talk radio, a
conservative oasis in a blistering dessert of progressive political babble,
even non- conspiratorial critics may begin to suspect an effort to shut down
all vocal opposition to Connecticut’s single party, progressive utopia.
Whence this tsunami of freudenschade?
Connecticut Commentary has
reviewed all the stories featured on Capitol Report – and more. So far, only
one report critical of the prosecution has emerged from the clustermuck. That
one, “Government blows it in closing arguments at Rowland trial,” was written by prosecutorial gadfly Norm Pattis, who has been promoting jury nullification
in some of his books.
Prosecutor Christopher Mattei’s closing remarks to the jury –
however successful in persuading the jury to return a verdict of guilty – was, in
Mr. Pattis’ view a load of warm, steaming bumcombe:
“Prosecutor Christopher Mattei was
preaching to a packed house in the New Haven courtroom where Rowland stands
trial.
“’This is a case that goes to the
very heart of the most basic right we have in America,’ Mattei said. ‘The right
to vote, the right to make informed decisions about who is going to represent
us.’”
“No it doesn’t, Chris. The case was
about a venal former governor trying to make a buck helping a rich man’s wife
find her way into Congress…
“’Mr. Rowland sought to deprive
voters of … information. He was going to be paid to steer that candidate right
into the United States government and he didn’t want anyone to know it,’ Mattei
said.
“Wake up, Chris. It happens all the
time.”
The real enemy of honest elections, according to Mr. Pattis, is “dark money.”
Electoral politics has been corrupted by hidden funds leeching into campaigns
from wealthy political kingmakers, George Soros on the left, the Koch brothers
on the right.
“Instead of meaningful electoral
reform, we get penny ante prosecutions like that of John Rowland. Yes, the
former governor is a convicted felon, having spent 10 months in prison for his
financial misconduct as governor. Yes, the payments to him most likely should
have been reported. But, as Diane Keaton once famously said to Woody Allen, ‘Lah-Dee-Dah.’”
Mr. Pattis, God bless him, can always be expected to sick a
sharp pencil in the eye of authoritarian Principals. One suspects he spent a good portion
of his High School years in detention pouring over Emile Zola’s “J’Accuse.”
A trial is a play in which two authors, the prosecution and
the defense, present to an audience, the jury, two separate variations of a narrative.
The jury is expected to choose in favor of the narrative it finds, to use a literary
expression, more compelling. This is what we call justice. On appeal, the
narrative preferred by the jury is sometimes vacated, usually because of some unjust
defect in the legal process itself.
In Mr. Rowland’s case, the prosecution presented to the jury
the more compelling narrative. But justice, that golden glimmer in the eye of God, is
not always served well by judicial processes – as witness Zola’s “J’Accuse.”
It should be noted, if only in passing, that the prosecution
managed to surmount a very high hurdle in the person of Brian Foley, who
acknowledged under cross examination that he had hired Mr. Rowland as a
consultant for this business and introduced Mr. Rowland to his staff as a consultant.
The Chief Financial Officer of Mr. Foley’s business swore under oath that Mr. Rowland
had indeed performed the service for which he was hired. Mr. Foley at first, in
a series of emails produced at trial, hotly defended the integrity of both Mr. Rowland and Lisa Wilson Foley, but later
underwent a Damascus Road conversion when he was told that the prosecution
intended to put his wife in prison for forty years if he declined to support
their preferred narrative. Mr. Foley also admitted under oath that he had
illegally shuttled money into his wife’s campaign. A deal was struck between
the Foleys and the prosecution, the Foleys flipped on their earlier narrative, and the jury found their newly constructed story compelling enough to convict
Mr. Rowland on all counts.
Though it was rarely mentioned in news and commentary accounts, the case against the Foleys was much stronger than the case against Rowland.
The litigation go-round is not over. In American
jurisprudence, as in American life in general, nothing is final but death and
taxes – if, BIG IF, your money does not run out. Mr. Rowland’s money will run
out sooner rather than later.
The Rowland prosecution is but a single chapter in a larger prospective story – “The
Taking Of The Fifth” -- that likely will never be written, because while
journalism has produced a ton of McEnroes, it seems incapable of producing a
single Zola.
In the meantime, should any left of center journalist in
Connecticut confess that the end of Mr. Rowland strikes him as sad – such a
promising political career gone to waste! – he should be hooted out of court
with a laugh loud as cannon shot.
Comments
While I am not a big fan of Mr Rowland and while he is indeed a big fish, I fail to see how prosecuting him for such trivial "crimes" makes me or the rest of us any safer. Surly the manpower and cost to bring him to trial along with the costs associated with his incarceration could be better spent frying the many other fish who are committing violent crimes. But then he is a Republican on a very blue state and examples must be made.