What more can you say about poor Fani Willis, thrown into a state of open humiliation and disarray before a national audience, and besmirched beyond belief by the way her “dalliance” unfolded, and the way she prevaricated about it? Making me think readily of the old phrase “hoisted by her own petard,” which of course others will, too.
Minting anything original here remains a difficult, near impossible task, especially now that the dust has completely cleared. Yes, the lady was over her head in her significant position. Yes, she wanted obsessively and vigorously to go after Trump and cohorts in Georgia. Yes, she no longer feels to the rational among us fit for that post she’s occupied.
It’s easy, ultra-easy to be cynical about this minor tragedy she and prosecutor Nathan Wade created and enacted. But there was, indeed, an element of pathos here (Willis greatly exceeding her grasp being one key ingredient that recurs throughout history and literature, too).
A romantic? Lonely? Yes, she was all that. Are such things intrinsically bad?
Not really. Childish? Perhaps, especially when she made plaintive asides on the stand about stashing gobs of cash at home, and what WOULD her father have thought? All this worsened by her lover’s own long silences as he himself pondered whether to lie in his testimony or not.
Such an imbroglio was indeed a kind of window on current American triviality; but yes, on corruption, too. I suppose we could emphasize both ends of that teeter-totter in about equal measure.
Along with all that of course, we can’t forget the frequent miscues of one mumblin’, blamin’, apologizin’, and exaggeratin’ type in an even higher position, Joe B.
Meanwhile, at exactly the same time as the broadcasting of the Willis-Wade trial proceedings, we got note of something that registered less with most Americans, but really should have: and that was the tragic death, really murder, really slow, agonizing murder of the formerly-poisoned but still resolute, courageous, and gallant Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny.
Here was something that wasn’t at all fodder for gossipy TV shows. Here was a real window into the mind of the sadistic autocrat, Putin. By extension it was a window into the mindset of the many brutes around the world working for Xi or for the Iranian mullahs or for Hezbollah, and on it goes.
While we goof around at the wheel! C’mon…
OK, Fani was, in fact, hoisted by her own petard. But with less clear bias or baseness than New York’s Ms. James or Mr. Bragg. Better them to go that way than her? In a way…
Meanwhile, all this DOES remain rather thin soup, if not entirely to the persecuted Trump, in the crosshairs of some sorry specimens, indeed. But in the main, trivial, trivial, trivial.
Especially when compared to poor Navalny, courageous to the last. To poor Ukrainian resistance fighters as well, overcoming the odds day after day in a difficult, dangerous series of predicaments. To young Israelis pawing through lethal, armament-stuffed tunnels in Gaza.
Them I salute. Fani? One can feel sorry for her in a way, but she really brought on this whole mess by herself, and it’s so different in tenor from what really matters in this dicey world of ours. Can America recover some of its old seriousness to see and feel that? One hopes so.
Given the state of the planet, and yes, the state of Joe, too, it’s entirely necessary that we do, and let the sad and tragic example of Navalny’s beacon on Putin’s cruelty light the way for us. We could do far worse (think Fani and Wade!)…
Yes, think, by contrast, of that televised testimony where loquacious Fani kept talking and talking and giving conflicted testimony, getting herself deeper and deeper into the muck; and us? Some of us were busy watching and with great dollops of Schadenfreude, titillation, glee, call it what you will.
It’s sad in a way that all THAT’s our “serious” or central kind of issue. I.e., to be entertained by this lady hurt so badly by … her own bag of firecrackers!